Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2017, Vol. 52 ›› Issue (2): 202-209.DOI: 10.11983/CBB16007

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Sex Expression and Reproduction Allocation in Eurya loquaiana

Jin Guo, Xiaoyan Yang, Hongping Deng*, Qin Huang, Yunting Li, Huayu Zhang   

  1. Key Laboratory of Eco-environment in Three Gorges Reservoir Region (Ministry of Education), School of Life Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
  • Received:2016-01-13 Accepted:2016-09-04 Online:2017-03-01 Published:2017-04-05
  • Contact: Deng Hongping
  • About author:

    # Co-first authors

Abstract: The genus of Eurya Thunb. was described as strictly dioecious, and the gender variation was extremely rare. Until now, bisexual flowers had only been reported in a few species such as E. japonica and E. obtusifolia. We recently found gender variation in E. loquaiana with different types of flowers. Here, we analyzed sex expression characteristics at the flower and plant levels and compared reproduction allocation between different kinds of flowers. E. loquaiana had six types of flowers: pistillate flower, staminate flower, pistillate flower with staminode, staminate flower with pistillode, hermaphrodite flower, and sterile flower. At the flower level, the genders of E. loquaiana were female, male, and bisexual; the gender at the plant level was complicated. E. loquaiana had six gender types: gynoecius and roesious, gynomonoecy, and romonoecy, monoecious and trimonoecious; Stamen biomass allocation was less in male flowers (including the male plant flowers and gender variant plants) than pistil biomass allocation in female flowers (including the female plant and gender variant plants). In bisexual flowers, the stamen biomass allocation was less than the pistil biomass allocation. This is a means to optimize its resource allocation and thus obtain the most fitness benefits.