Plant parental effects on offspring performance: Impacts of clonality

Effects of parental environments on offspring phenotypes are ecologically and evolutionarily important for plants. As clonal offspring develop close to their parents and their environments are predictable, plant clonality is hypothesized to influence adaptive parental effects.

We conducted a meta‐analysis of parental effects on offspring performance of clonal and non‐clonal plant species. Offspring performance was extracted from experiments that evaluated offspring in both benign and stressful environments, with parents originating from the same benign or stressful environments.

Parental effects generally enhanced offspring performance under matching (predictable) parent–offspring environments, but their direction and intensity varied depending on the environmental context and clonality. Parental effects positively affected offspring growth, reproductive and morphological traits of clonal plant species in predictable benign environments, but parental effects were significantly stronger on growth, morphological and physiological traits of non‐clonal plant species in predictable stressful environments. For clonal plant species only, parental effects on reproductive traits were more positive in clonally derived than in sexually derived offspring in predictable benign environments, but more positive in sexually derived than in clonally derived offspring in predictable stressful environments.

Synthesis . Plant clonality enhances parental effects on offspring performance in predictable benign environments, but does not increase the chance of adaptive parental effects in predictable stressful environments. The findings highlight the importance of considering reproductive modes and environmental contexts in parental effects on offspring phenotypes.