Constraints on selfish behavior in plants
Marina Semchenko, 2020
We are used to human behavior, and the actions of other animals, being
described as selfish, aggressive, or cooperative. Such words come up
less often when contemplating plants. Yet plants too have evolved a
fascinating array of behavioral strategies in their struggle for
resources, although these are hard to demonstrate and quantify.
Much of the world's plant biomass exists out of sight underground in the form of roots. Plants adjust how and where their roots grow according to how close neighboring—and competing—plants might be. The model extracts some of the rules about how root balls differ when grown close to neighboring plants compared with being grown in the absence of competition.
Plant roots determine carbon uptake, survivorship, and agricultural yield and represent a large proportion of the world’s vegetation carbon pool. Study of belowground competition, unlike aboveground shoot competition, is hampered by our inability to observe roots. We developed a consumer-resource model based in game theory that predicts the root density spatial distribution of individual plants and tested the model predictions in a greenhouse experiment. Plants in the experiment reacted to neighbors as predicted by the model’s evolutionary stable equilibrium, by both overinvesting in nearby roots and reducing their root foraging range. We thereby provide a theoretical foundation for belowground allocation of carbon by vegetation that reconciles seemingly contradictory experimental results such as root segregation and the tragedy of the commons in plant roots.
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