Individual behaviour of some legumes in monocultures related to growth rate

Abstract

The three leguminous species under consideration here, whilst having a number of common behavioural features in monocultures also show differences with regard to mortality, plasticity and productivity which could be related to the growth rate of the species concerned. Thus it is seen that the density-induced mortality is much higher in fast growing species as compared to the one with slower growth rate with the result that in the former species there was an ultimate reduction in population size at very high densities. Not only was the dry weight yield different at low and high nutrient levels in the soil for all the species, but in the case of the fast growing species like Cassia the dry weight yield/m² declined significantly at very high densities whereas in the case of the slow-growing one it tended to level off. The seed output/m² tended to decline at very high density in all the species but this decline was most pronounced in the case of the fast-growing species. The significance of these results are discussed.