Multiplicity in Unity
Plant Subindividual Variation and Interactions with Animals
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Which Traits Vary within Plants?
Many different features vary across reiterated structures of the same plant.
Chapter 3. Continuous Within-Plant Variation of Reiterated Structures
The extent of subindividual variation in continuously varying leaf, flower, fruit, and seed traits is assessed.
Chapter 4. Distribution of Subindividual Variability in Time and Space
How are variants of reiterated structures organized along temporal, spatial, and architectural axes?
Chapter 5. Causes of Subindividual Variability
Mutations within individuals and organ-level responses to environmental cues are the main classes of remote causes of within-plant variability in reiterated structures.
Chapter 6. Organismal Mechanisms of Subindividual Variability
Ontogenetic contingency, the interplay between inherent architecture and environmental milieu, and developmental stochasticity are mechanisms responsible for within-plant variability of reiterated structures.
Chapter 7. Subindividual Variability as an Individual Property
The Haldane-Roy conjecture is verified and extended: individual plants have not only their characteristic means, but also their characteristic standard deviations and characteristic spatial patterns of within-plant variation.
Chapter 8. Consequences of Within-Plant Variation for Interacting Animals
Phytophagous animals’ discrimination among organs of the same plant can lead to the most profitable choice but has attendant costs that may influence their overall performance and promote among-plant selectivity.
Chapter 9. Fitness Consequences of Subindividual Variability in Organ Traits for Plants
Subindividual variation in the characteristics of reiterated organs may influence the fecundity or vegetative performance of plants, and through this mechanism, individual fitness differences may arise as a consequence of variation in the extent and organization of variability.
Chapter 10. Evolutionary Implications of Within-Plant Variability in Organ Traits
Subindividual multiplicity of organs can affect the evolutionary trajectory of organ traits by setting upper limits on responses to selection, opening the possibility of selection by animals on plant-level variability, and conditioning the size of realized phenotypic space at the individual and population levels.
Epilogue
Literature CitedIndex
“Multiplicity in Unity is the only substantial book in existence whose primary focus is the within-individual trait variability of plant organs. . . . [Herrera’s book] should be required reading for anyone involved in studying plant functional traits, and particularly those who develop and use plant-trait databases. At a broader level, this book would be a most useful bookshelf addition for anyone interested in the study of variability in plant ecology.”
Biological Sciences: Biochemistry | Biology--Systematics | Botany | Conservation | Ecology | Evolutionary Biology | Microbiology | Natural History | Physiology, Biomechanics, and Morphology
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