Review of the effects of climate change on the propagation of perennial clonal plants

Climate change consists of many simultaneous factors which have different influences on plants, animals and microbes in various ecosystems. Clonal plants have two different modes of reproduction, sexual reproduction and vegetative propagation. Many clonal plants have abandoned or nearly abandoned sexual reproduction, owing to environmental adaptation. To some extent, their vegetative propagation ability might represent the total productivity of these plants. Therefore, the response of clonal plant propagation to climate change has becomea crucial issue. In this paper, we review the effects of the main climatic factors on clonal growth of a perennial plant. Both elevated CO2 and nitrogen deposition increased the output of daughter shoots in most papers, but decreasing precipitation had adverse or noeffect. Warming time had different effects on daughter shoots. Although there is a lot of research about the effects of eachclimate change factor on clonal plants, studies showing howthe interaction of these factors affectsclonal plant propagation arescarce.To strengthen the body of research, studies about how interaction among the climatic factors affectsclonal plants areessential, because theynot only enrich knowledge of clonal plant and global change ecology, but also provide practical guidance for grassland management in the future.