Bamboos are perennial woody grasses that display an enigmatic mix of traits. Bamboo is highly shade intolerant like early-successional trees. Without secondary xylem, bamboos cannot continue to grow once they reach a maximum height or replace xylem damaged by hydraulic stress and must instead replace each stem after a few years using vegetative propagation via rhizomes. These traits of bamboo would appear to make them inferior to trees in competition for both light and water in all but early-successional wet locations. However, some species competitively exclude trees and form persistent monodominant stands across large areas in tropical and temperate forests, including areas that are not mesic. Moreover, bamboo paradoxically postpones seed production for decades to over a century, and then flowers semelparously and dies synchronously. The delayed reproduction appears to be inconsistent with an early-successional strategy to colonize disturbed areas as soon as they form, while the simultaneous death over large areas appears to be inconsistent with a late-successional strategy to gain and hold space. Bamboo exhibits great diversity in its growth form and life histories along the tropical-temperate geographical cline, with tropical bamboo being taller with shorter rhizome lengths and flowering interval lengths than temperate bamboo. We hypothesize that all of the above characteristics of bamboo are essential elements of competitive strategies to arrest succession in a lineage that lacks secondary xylem. To develop this Arrested Succession Hypothesis, we construct mathematical models of competition for recently disturbed areas between a tree species and a species with bamboo's enigmatic characteristics. We modeled the growth of bamboo genetic individuals from seedlings after seed germination to clonal culms at mass flowering and then placed these individuals in competition with one another and with trees in simple models of competition for light. Results explain how bamboo's traits allow it to persist in forests late in succession despite its hydraulic disadvantages, and form monodominant stands in the temperate zone, but not in tropical forests. They explain why bamboo is semelparous with synchronized reproduction, and why maximum culm size and age, reproductive interval, and rhizome length differ between the tropics and the temperate zone.

中文翻译：

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竹子神秘的生活史被解释为阻止演替的策略


竹子是多年生木本草本植物，表现出神秘的性状组合。竹子像早期演替的树木一样高度不耐阴。没有次生木质部，竹子一旦达到最大高度就无法继续生长或取代因水力胁迫而受损的木质部，而必须在几年后通过根茎进行无性繁殖来更换每根茎。竹子的这些特性似乎使它们在除早期演替潮湿地区之外的所有地区都无法竞争光线和水。然而，一些物种竞争性地排斥树木，并在热带和温带森林的大片区域（包括非中湿地区）形成持续的单优势林分。此外，自相矛盾的是，竹子将种子生产推迟了几十年到一个多世纪，然后开花并同步死亡。延迟繁殖似乎与早期演替策略不一致，即一旦受干扰区域形成就定植，而大面积的同时死亡似乎与获得和保持空间的晚期演替策略不一致。热带-温带地理斜线沿线竹子的生长形式和生活史具有很大的多样性，热带竹子比温带竹子高，根茎长度和花间隔长度短。我们假设竹子的上述所有特征都是在缺乏次生木质部的谱系中阻止演替的竞争策略的基本要素。为了发展这个 Arrested Succession 假说，我们构建了树种和具有竹子神秘特征的物种之间最近受到干扰的区域竞争的数学模型。 我们模拟了竹子遗传个体的生长，从种子发芽后的幼苗到大规模开花时的克隆茎，然后将这些个体相互竞争并与树木竞争，形成简单的光照竞争模型。结果解释了竹子的特性如何使其能够连续在森林中持续存在，尽管存在水力劣势，并在温带形成单优势林分，但在热带森林中则不然。他们解释了为什么竹子是同步繁殖的半生竹子，以及为什么热带和温带地区的最大茎秆大小和年龄、繁殖间隔和根茎长度不同。