Orchids do not pay costs at emergence for prolonged dormancy.

Area of Science:

• Plant Ecology
• Evolutionary Biology
• Phenotypic Plasticity

Background:

• Prolonged plant dormancy is often viewed as a stress response incurring fitness costs.
• These perceived costs may arise from the plant's condition before dormancy, not dormancy itself.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test if dormancy costs in Epipactis atrorubens are intrinsic or dependent on the plant's prior state.
• To re-evaluate dormancy as a potential strategy for performance and reproduction over time.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of eight years of demographic data for the terrestrial orchid Epipactis atrorubens.
• Application of generalized linear mixed models to compare vital rates of dormant and emergent plants.
• Distinguishing dormant plants into stage classes based on prior performance.

Main Results:

• Dormant Epipactis atrorubens plants did not represent a single, homogeneous stage.
• Vital rates of dormant plants reflected their life stage preceding dormancy.
• Emerging plants showed marginally improved performance, especially smaller individuals, challenging the notion of inherent dormancy costs.

Conclusions:

• Classifying all dormant plants uniformly can misrepresent dormancy's impact on fitness.
• Prolonged dormancy may be a form of phenotypic plasticity, enabling temporal distribution of effort.
• Dormancy could be a strategy for managing performance and reproduction across time, rather than solely a stress response.