ReviewEcology letters2020
From theory to experiments for testing the proximate mechanisms of mast seeding: an agenda for an experimental ecology.
Review in Ecology letters, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Masting Breakdown in European Beech Reduces Fitness Benefits of Masting, Partly Explained by Climate Change.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Flowering and Flower Maturation in Valley OakEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Keystone Predation: What Is It, and Is It Supported by Empirical Evidence?Ecology and evolution · 2025Review
- Weather drivers of reproductive variability in perennial plants and their implications for climate change risks.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Masting promotes transformation from predation to mutualism in an oak-weevil-rodent system.Science China. Life sciences · 2024Article
- Relatives reproduce in synchrony: kinship and individual condition shape intraspecific variation in masting phenotype.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Use climatic space-for-time substitutions with care: Not only climate, but also local environment affect performance of the key forest species bilberry along elevation gradient.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Partial protection from fluctuating selection leads to evolution towards wider population size fluctuation and a novel mechanism of balancing selection.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Pollen production of downy birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.) along an altitudinal gradient in the European Alps.International journal of biometeorology · 2023Article
- Transcriptomic landscape of staminate catkins development during overwintering process inFrontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Understanding mast seeding for conservation and land management.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Modes of climate variability bridge proximate and evolutionary mechanisms of masting.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Climate change and plant reproduction: trends and drivers of mast seeding change.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- By wind or wing: pollination syndromes and alternate bearing in horticultural systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- The ecology and evolution of synchronized reproduction in long-lived plants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- A brief history of masting research.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Measuring temporal patterns in ecology: The case of mast seeding.Ecology and evolution · 2021Review
- Resource manipulation through experimental defoliation has legacy effects on allocation to reproductive and vegetative organs in Quercus ilex.Annals of botany · 2020Article
- Plant-available soil nutrients have a limited influence on cone production patterns of individual white spruce trees.Oecologia · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Highly variable and synchronised production of seeds by plant populations, known as masting, is implicated in many important ecological processes, but how it arises remains poorly understood. The lack of experimental studies prevents underlying mechanisms from being explicitly tested, and thereby precludes meaningful predictions on the consequences of changing environments for plant reproductive patterns and global vegetation dynamics. Here we review the most relevant proximate drivers of masting and outline a research agenda that takes the biology of masting from a largely observational field of ecology to one rooted in mechanistic understanding. We divide the experimental framework into three main processes: resource dynamics, pollen limitation and genetic and hormonal regulation, and illustrate how specific predictions about proximate mechanisms can be tested, highlighting the few successful experiments as examples. We envision that the experiments we outline will deliver new insights into how and why masting patterns might respond to a changing environment.
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