The Reproductive Ecology Of Two Dioecious Fig Species In The Tropical Rainforest Understory Of Xishuangbanna, China

Because fig trees are among the keystone plant resources in tropical rainforests, study of their reproductive ecology can be of great use in the conservation and restoration of tropical rainforest diversity. This paper presents for the first time information on the reproductive ecology of two dioecious fig species, mainly on their phenology, the reproductive behaviors of associated fig wasps and ecology. The two fig species, Ficus cyrtophylla and Ficus subulata, are very abundant in forest understory. Except that, through comparing the style morphology and measuring the style-lengths and the pollinator's ovipositor lengths, we also have shown the relationships between the length of the style in female florets and their fate in Ficus hispida and F. cyrtophylla. The results are as follows.1. For F. cyrtophylla, the fig trees were ever-green, and there was a little variation in the amount of the leaves present among various seasons. At the population level, trees continuously produced the figs year-round, with intra-tree synchrony but asynchrony among the trees. There were two fruiting peaks per year, November and April-May, respectively, and each tree produced 2-3 crops in the whole year.2. Blastophaga sp. is the only species-specific pollinator of F. cyrtophylla, and this passively pollinating species can only reproduce within figs of this species. The range in number of the pollinators trapped in the lumen of receptive figs was 0-5 in both gall figs and seed figs. The majority (about 78.45% of gall figs and 84.25% of seed figs) had only one, about 16.02% of gall fig and 13.33% of seed fig had two...