Greater reproductive assurance of asexual plant compared to sexual relative in a low density sympatric population – experimental evidence for pollen limitation

This dataset contains data from a common
garden experiment described in the paper: “Mráz P,
Mrázová V. 2021. Greater reproductive assurance of asexual plant compared
to sexual relative in a low density sympatric population – experimental
evidence for pollen limitation. Journal of Evolutionary Ecology
”.  We compared the level and stability of reproductive assurance
between sexual self-incompatible and asexual autonomously apomictic plants
of Hieracium alpinum (Asteraceae) cultivated in a sympatric low-density
population with two levels of spatial clumping of sexual plants. Overall,
we found that the realized seed set (i.e. proportion of well developed
seeds per capitulum) of asexuals was ca. 3-times greater than that of
sexuals (83% versus 27%), while the variance of this trait expressed as
coefficient of variation was ca. 4-times smaller in asexuals compared to
sexuals (19% versus 83%). Solitary sexual plants had more than 2-times
lower realized seed set when compared to clumps composed of two spatially
close (20-30 cm) sexual plants (13% versus 34%). Our study
provides experimental evidence for benefit of uniparental reproduction of
asexuals in a sympatric situation when the availability of mates is
limited. This, together with unpredictability of pollinator environment
could provide autonomous apomicts with an ultimate demographic superiority
during colonization reflected in geographical parthenogenesis observed in
this species.