EFFECTS OF MATERNAL WARMING ON THE MORPHOLOGY, CARBON AND NITROGEN CONCENTRATION AND GERMINATION OF POTAMOGETON CRISPUS TURIONS

Potamogeton crispus plays an important role in maintaining the balance of lake ecosystem in winter-early spring. Maternal environment can influence life-history and offspring performance traits of aquatic plant. Understanding maternal environmental effects could predict the response mechanism of aquatic plant life-history traits to climate warming. In this study, P. crispus was used to explore the response to warming with three heated modes by investigating morphology, stoichiometry and early germination strategy of turions. We found that warming had no effect on tu-rion wet weight, but extreme warming significantly increased turion length and width. The results of stoichiometry indicate that maternal extreme warming significantly increased N concentrations in turions, but significantly decreased C 鲶N ratio. And maternal warming accelerated the germination of turions and seedling growth. In summary, maternal warming significantly affected turion morphology, stoichiometry and germination.