Research On Relationships Between Functional Traits And Compensation Mechanisms Of Androdioecious Acer Mandshuricum

Androdioecy (the coexistence of two genders, bisexual and male) is a rare breeding system, and almost confirmed androdioecy plants were shrub and herbaceous plants. The objective of this paper is to study the functional traits and carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus content of leaf, branch, flower, fruit, and new-born branch in different flower and fruit development stages. We want to analyze the sexual differences in functional traits and stoichiometry of different components, and to find whether there is a compensation mechanism which help bisexuals to obtain more resource to compensate for the higher reproductive costs. The main results can be summarized as follows:(1) Bisexuals allocated more resource to reproductive growth when total fruit biomass was considered(P<0.001); (2) There is significantly difference among flower traits between bisexual and male. No significant difference was found in the same flower and fruit developmental stage for leaf and branch functional traits except for leaf dry matter content in fruit inflating stage, while significant differences were found among the three different stages (P<0.01); (3) Compared with male flower, bisexual flower allocated higher nitrogen and phosphorus to flower. Significant differences were found for leaf and branch carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus content among the three different flower and fruit development stages(P<0.001). (4) Pearson test indicated that bisexuals showed stronger correlation than males no matter for reproduction organs or vegetation organs (P<0.01). The results indicated that for Acer mandshuricum, reproduction did not have significant effects on vegetative growth, suggesting that there might be a compensation mechanism which help bisexual to obtain more resource to compensate for the higher reproductive costs.