Reproductive ecology combined with population genetics reveals pansexual mulberry parasitism...

Mulberry parasitic plants (Mistletoes) play an important role
in ecosystems as key species and key food resources.
It is a class of semi-parasitic, stem-parasitic shrubs with about 1,600 species worldwide
.
Mulberry parasitic plants rely on specific birds (mainly pecking birds and embroidered birds) to pollinate and disperse seeds, and mulberry parasitic plants provide birds with nectar, fruit and other food resources supplied by recent years through interspecific and intraspecific phenological asynchrony, and mulberry parasitic plants and birds establish a mutually beneficial relationship
.
In order to explore the relationship between the two or the three in the "host plant-mulberry parasitic plant-visiting birds" system, and to reveal how the host and pollinator affect the spatial genetic structure of mulberry parasitic plants, researchers from the Animal and Plant Relations Group of Banna Botanical Garden selected one of the most generalized mulberry parasitic plants distributed in the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan Province, Dendrophthoe andpentra As a research material, the system has been studied comprehensively from several aspects, such as reproductive phenology, pollination ecology, breeding system and spatial genetic structure
.

(1) In order to explore the factors affecting the phenotropic asynchronous nature of the flowers and fruits of the five-socket parasitism, through the reproductive phenological observation of the five-socket parasitism in a total of 8 samples in 4 samples for two consecutive years, it was found that the flowering period and fruit stage of the five-socket parasitism were unimodally distributed, and the individuals with larger crown width and higher degree of light reception had earlier initial flowering period and longer flowering and fruit stage, and the species of host plants significantly affected the reproductive phenology of the five-socket parasitism (Figure 1).
However, changes in the number of host species did not significantly improve the Reproductive phenological asynchrony of the parasitic reproductive phenology
.
The findings were published in the Journal of Plant Ecology in Host-mediated effects in the reproductive phenological asynchrony of a generalist mistletoe in China
.

(2) The spatial distribution pattern of the five-ruby parasite was investigated in 13 samples in 4 sites, and the heterogeneity and population genetic structure of 76 parents and 829 offspring in 4 sites were calculated using 13 microsatellite markers, and the fine-scale spatial genetic structure was analyzed on 166 five-branched parasitic individuals infected in 4 mango trees in the same group.
Combined with its pollination ecology, it explores the effects
of bird visit lines on mating systems and population genetic structures.
The study found that the parasitism of pentagram was spatially clustered, and there were differences in infection prevalence and infection intensity between host species, and host size had a significant effect on the parasitic intensity (Figure 2).

Flower-visiting birds often visit multiple flowers of the same five-socketed parasitic individual or other pentatophytic parasitic individuals
on the same host.
Human-controlled pollination experiments showed that the parasitic inbrulation of pentamoceae was acceptable, but genetic analysis showed that all populations exhibited high outcrossing rates (MLTR t m 0.
83–1.
20, Bayesian t_m 0.
772–0.
952
).
Parasitic individuals have spatial genetic structures between host trees, but no genetic structures exist within the same host tree (Figure 3
).
The above study used a combination of reproductive ecology and population genetics to find that although the five-leaf parasitism bloomed in large numbers at the same time, self-inbred was affable, and visited birds visited the same body or multiple individuals in the vicinity many times, the plant still showed a high rate of heterogeneity, indicating that the mechanism of the plant to maintain disintercourse may be more complex, and more in-depth exploration
is still needed in the future.
The findings were published in the journal Molecular Ecology under the title High Outcrossing rates in a self-compatible and highly aggregated host-generalist mistletoe
.

Fig.
1: Differences in phenology of pentagonium parasites propagating on different hosts

Fig.
2.
Effect of host tree height on the intensity of parasitic infection of pentagram per canopy volume

Figure 3: Spatial genetic structure of pentagonal parasitism