engleski

Phenotypic plasticity of Erigeron annuus (L.) Pers. in Central Croatia

The reasons why some alien plants become invasive are commonly debated among invasion biologists, and phenotypic plasticity is often suggested to play an important role in plant invasions, through enlarging ecological niche broadness. Northern American Erigeron annuus (L.) Pers. is a very variable apomictic species with three subspecies recognized in Europe. It is widespread in Croatia and considered invasive ; frequently occurring in disturbed habitats, often in large numbers. We have measured plant height, leaf area, fresh leaf weight, dry leaf weight, SLA, LDMC and leaf circularity of 18 populations in Central Croatia, to determine the extent of their variability. According to ANOVA analyses, all measured traits resulted to be significantly different amongst pairs of populations, with plant height being most variable, followed by SLA and LDMC, while circularity has shown least variability. At this point, we did not find many significant and meaningful correlations of traits with several soil properties and climatic data. Twelve populations were identified as ssp. septentrionalis, one population as ssp. strigosus and and five as ssp. annuus – the latter with highest values of plant height and all leaf traits with exception of LDMC. Regarding measured soil properties, pH values were relatively even, ranging from 6.1-8.5, while the values of organic matter and soil nitrogen varied considerably (3.4-29.2% and 0.21-2.45 mg/g, respectively). Finding a potential pattern between plant traits and environmental data requires further environmentally stratified sampling in the future.

invasive plants ; plant traits ; variability ; environmental data

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