Chaotic mating systems

Why is reproduction so erratic in some plants? Mast seeding in plants is not just variable reproduction, but (in the extreme) is characterized by a bimodal distribution of population-level reproductive output among years, with huge seed production in some years, interspersed by almost zero reproduction in other years. Rees et al. have now shown that highly variable seed production by individuals of one species is explained by a simple mechanistic resource-based model that assumes that plants must exceed a threshold level of resources to reproduce. The fitted model has chaotic (but highly periodic) dynamics. Environmental forcing then synchronizes seed production at the population level to generate the population-level masting behaviour.