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MATERNAL INVESTMENT AND FRUIT ABORTION IN PHASEOLUS VULGARIS
Author(s) -
Nakamura Robert R.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
american journal of botany
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.218
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1537-2197
pISSN - 0002-9122
DOI - 10.1002/j.1537-2197.1986.tb08550.x
Subject(s) - biology , phaseolus , domestication , abortion , offspring , pollen , survivorship curve , botany , horticulture , ecology , pregnancy , genetics , cancer
Plants lose some of their parental investment through fruit abortion. Resource conservation theory predicts that the maternal plant should abort those fruits furthest from maturity in order to conserve scarce resources. Embryo‐quality theory predicts that the maternal plant should favor offspring of particular genotypes. I recorded the patterns of maternal investment in floral cohorts of domesticated and wild beans, Phaseolus vulgaris L. In accord with the resource conservation theory, late pod cohorts have the highest fruit abortion rates. When domesticated beans are grown in smaller pots, late cohort survivorship declines. When domesticated beans are crossed with pollen donors of different degrees of relatedness, the fruit abortion rate is the same even though seeds from the outbred crosses weigh more. The challenge for ecologists is to model and test the combined and possibly conflicting effects of selection for resource conservation and high offspring quality.