The ability of clonal plants to spread horizontally and to share resources within genets has long been considered advantageous in spatially heterogeneous environments, yet our understanding of how such traits relate to its widespread success and dominance is still limited. Using a dwarf bamboo, Sasa kurilensis, that often dominates cool‐temperate forest understorys, we investigated how population recovery over 20 years after an episodic die‐off may be augmented by clonal expansion via rhizomes. Previous analyses on genet demography using 9‐m² plots showed that more productive genets were more likely to survive, spread laterally, and replace less productive ones. In this study, we examined whether the recovery of biomass in lower light microsites, where biomass recovery was initially slower, was supported by the spread of productive genets at larger scales, from surrounding higher‐light microsites. We found that the biomass recovery in lower‐light plots was more supported by genets that spread clonally into the plots. Such genets that spread from outside plots produced larger culms than those that had originally germinated there. Whereas genets that contributed much to the biomass of the low‐light plots spread extensively from higher‐light microsites, the spatial extent of genets that originally germinated in these plots was quite limited, so that the patterns of clonal expansion appeared to be unidirectional along the light gradient. Our findings suggest that clonal expansion of productive genets from higher‐light into shaded microsites may be important for S. kurilensis to proliferate across heterogeneous light environments.

中文翻译：

---

矮竹的空间遗传动态：在偶发性死亡后克隆扩展到遮荫的林下层有助于再生

长期以来，人们一直认为克隆植物在种间水平传播和共享资源的能力在空间异质环境中是有利的，但是我们对这种性状如何与其广泛的成功和优势地位相关的理解仍然有限。我们使用矮竹（Sasa kurilensis）（通常在温带森林的林下种质上占主导），研究了偶发性死亡后20年的种群恢复如何通过根状茎的无性繁殖而得以增强。以前使用9‐m ²进行的基因人口学分析地块表明，生产效率更高的种系更有可能生存，横向传播并替代生产能力较低的种系。在这项研究中，我们研究了低光位微生境中生物量的回收最初是否较慢，而低光位微生境中生物量的回收最初是由周围高光位微生境中大规模生产性繁殖的扩散所支持的。我们发现，在弱光地块中生物量的恢复得到克隆繁殖到地块中的种系的支持。从外地散布的种系产生的茎比原始发芽的种系更大。尽管对弱光地块生物量有很大贡献的种系从高光微地点广泛传播，但最初在这些地块中发芽的种系的空间范围非常有限，因此克隆扩展的模式似乎沿着光梯度是单向的。我们的发现表明，生产性基因从较高光照的克隆扩展到阴影微站点可能对kurilensis链霉菌在异质光照环境中增殖。