Reproductive output
The effect of soil warming on reproductive output was generally negative regardless of germination strategy. Warming reduced the number of inflorescences produced and the number of viable infructescences per plant across strategies (Fig. 1, Fig. 3a and 3b, Table 1). Overall, there was also a significant reduction in the total number of plants flowering (Fig. 4, Table 1) under warmed conditions.
Individual seed mass varied among germination strategies with seed of the immediate strategy being lightest and staggered being heaviest, but warming did not result in any change in seed mass (Fig. 1, Fig. 3c, Table 1). Compared to the field collected seed, mass of the seed produced in the soil warming experiment was up to 1.2 mg per seed heavier than the seed collected from the field (parent), except for those exhibiting an immediate germination strategy, where seed mass between field and experiment was constant (Fig. 3c).