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REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY OF A TROPICAL PALM SWAMP COMMUNITY IN THE VENEZUELAN LLANOS
Author(s) -
Ramirez Nelson,
Brito Ysaleny
Publication year - 1990
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.1537-2197.1990.tb11378.x
Subject(s) - biology , plant reproductive morphology , obligate , swamp , botany , pollinator , ecology , melastomataceae , gene flow , population , pollen , pollination , biochemistry , sociology , gene , genetic variation , demography
The reproductive biology of a tropical palm swamp community, called morichal in the Venezuelan Central Llanos, was studied. Of the 128 woody and herbaceous species of plants recorded, 99 (77.34%) were hermaphrodites, 25 (19.53%) were monoecious, and four (3.13%) were dioecious. The morichal is characterized by a low number of species with obligate cross‐fertilization. The frequencies of species with different breeding systems in a subsample of 26 species showed that eight (30.77%) were self‐incompatible, 14 (53.85%) were self‐compatible, and four (15.38%) were agamospermous. Ten of 14 self‐compatible species were autogamous. Regardless of the self‐incompatibility level estimated, seed and fruit set were greater in self‐fertilized flowers than in hand‐pollinated flowers in three of the nine self‐incompatible species. These results are related to the facts that: 1) the relative isolation of the plant population limits the gene flow among similar communities and enforces the intrapopulation pollen flow; 2) the overlapping flowering patterns and infrequent and unspecialized pollinators may be enforcing self‐compatibility and agamospermy; 3) self‐compatibility is the rule among short‐lived species in the morichal; and 4) three out of four agamospermous species are of the Melastomataceae family.