Extensive clonal spread and longevity of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) provide insight into management plans

As an ecologically important foundation species, Serenoa repens provides crucial structural and functional services to many southeastern United States ecosystems. Its fruits are valuable to many vertebrates including medicinal uses by humans. Many land managers, however, consider Serenoa a troublesome plant that spread rapidly to dominate other plants. Accordingly, management plans have been developed to reduce Serenoa. Yet, we have little evidence of Serenoa spread/invasion. Furthermore, our understanding of its life history traits including generation time, clonal propagation, and seed recruitment is limited, which provides a poor basis for the development of proper management plans. By using AFLPs and clonal-network modeling, our goal is to reveal such life history information to provide insights into proper Serenoa management. We analyzed 263 Serenoa and 134 Sabal etonia (a sympatric non-clonal palmetto) samples collected from a 20 x 20 m plot in Florida scrub. Sabal samples were us...作为一种具有重要生态价值的基础物种，锯叶棕（Serenoa repens）为美国东南部众多生态系统提供了关键的结构与功能服务。其果实对诸多脊椎动物具有重要价值，人类亦将其用于药用。然而，许多土地管理者将锯叶棕视为棘手的入侵性植物——它扩散速度极快，可侵占其他植物的生存空间。据此，相关部门已制定管理计划以抑制锯叶棕的扩张。但目前几乎没有证据表明锯叶棕存在扩散或入侵现象。此外，学界对锯叶棕的生活史特征（包括世代时间、克隆繁殖与种子更新）的认知仍较为有限，这难以作为制定合理管理方案的可靠依据。本研究通过扩增片段长度多态性（AFLPs）与克隆网络建模技术，旨在揭示锯叶棕的相关生活史信息，为制定科学合理的锯叶棕管理策略提供参考。本研究分析了采自佛罗里达灌丛20米×20米样地的263份锯叶棕样本与134份沙巴箬棕（Sabal etonia，一种同域分布的非克隆型棕榈）样本。沙巴箬棕样本的……