No. 1 Feburary 1998
Conference Abstracts
REPRODUCTIVE ECOLOGY OF AUSTRALIAN ALPINE PLANTS.
Dr. Catherine Pickering, School of Applied Science, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, PMB 50 Gold Coast Mail Center, Queensland 4217 Australia, +61 (07) 5594 8259, +61 (07) 5594 8067, c.pickering@eas.gu.edu.au
Climate change and the reproductive ecology of Australian alpine plants Alpine environments are extreme places for plants to grow and reproduce. Physical and biotic factors such as low temperatures, limited growing and flowering season, strong seasonality, highly variable conditions between years, and a limited diversity and abundance of pollinators all act as constraints on plants AE ability to reproduce and survive. Plants can exhibit a range of reproductivestrategies that overcome these constraints. These include a perenniallife history, opportunistic growth, over-wintering of flowerprimordia, self-compatibility, autodeposition of pollen, longevity of individual flowers, generalized pollinator syndromes and vegetative reproduction. Predicted changes temperature and snow cover, will alterthe constraints, potentially significantly increasing the duration of the flowering and growing season, increasing the variability ofclimatic conditions between years, and increasing the abundance and diversity of insects, both pollinators and herbivores. Climatic change may reduce the effectiveness of strategies currently exhibited byplants as the behavior becomes disassociated from the conditions under which it evolved. Potentially of greater significance, however, is how it alters the constraints imposed on others species, with the possibility of increased competition among alpine, sub-alpine and weed species. This talk will address changing constraints and strategies for four groups of plants, 1) specialist alpine plants, 2) generalist alpine species, 3) weeds and 4) subalpine/lowland species.