PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 7: Grasslands
Tuesday, August 9, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Phenology and allocation to flowering in C3 and C4 grasses in a mesic grassland: implications for climate change.
James, Julie*,1, Knapp, Alan 2, 1 Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas, USA2 Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado, USA
ABSTRACT- Understanding the relationship between flowering phenology and reproductive allocation is necessary in order to make predictions about how projected changes in growing season length or temperature will impact grasslands in the future. Depending on the seasonal timing of warming, species-specific responses in reproduction are likely and will have community and ecosystem-level consequences. We assessed the proportion of grass tillers that flowered along a phenological gradient (early, mid and late season flowering species) in 8 grasses (both C3 and C4) at the Konza Prairie Biological Station in NE Kansas. The goal of this research was to test the hypothesis that species that flower earlier in the growing season, when resource availability is typically high, will allocate more tillers to flower production compared to species that flower in late summer when resources are unpredictable. These data are then related to forecast patterns of warming to predict which species are more likely to be affected by climate change. This assessment of contemporary relationships between plant phenology and reproduction allocation may also provide insight into interactions among global change and management options (fire and grazing) that influence flower production in these grasses.
Key words: grassland, flowering, tiller, phenology