Importance of Clonal Plants in Community
群落中克隆植物的重要性

This paper reviews studies on importance of clonal plants at community\|level, habitat preference and competitive relations of clonal plants. The relation of plant species diversity to importance of clonal plants was concerned based on competitive relations and habitat conditions. The hierarchical (genet\|ramet system\|ramet) organization of clonal plants offers a variety of strategies in life history, resource use and space occupation that are specific to clonality. We present examples for clonal traits and their community level effects. These examples suggest that clonality imposes strong constraints on spatial pattern and competitive relations in plant community. However, clonality can also release constraints of species coexistence related to a trade\|off between mobility and local persistence. Clonal plants have internal (genet\|level) control mechanisms on a spatio\|temporal scale that present directly between the fine\|scale (i.e. individual to individual) and the large\|scale (i.e. population to population) interactions in a community. This scenario enriched classical competitive theory and niche partition theory, and provided evidences for species coexistence. Therefore, the presence of clonal species in a community widens the scope of potential mechanisms of community organization.