Juvenile survival is critical to population persistence and evolutionary change. However, the survival of juvenile plants from emergence to reproductive maturity is rarely quantified. This is especially true for long‐lived perennials with extended pre‐reproductive periods. Furthermore, studies rarely have the replication necessary to account for variation among populations and cohorts. We estimated juvenile survival and its re...

Synchronized episodic reproduction among long‐lived plants shapes ecological interactions, ecosystem dynamics, and evolutionary processes worldwide. Two active scientific fields investigate the causes and consequences of such synchronized reproduction: the fields of masting and fire‐stimulated flowering. While parallels between masting and fire‐stimulated flowering have been previously noted, there has been little dialogue bet...

Habitat fragmentation produces small, spatially isolated populations that promote inbreeding. Remnant populations often contain inbred and outbred individuals, but it is unclear how inbreeding relative to outbreeding affects the expression of functional traits and biotic interactions such as herbivory. We measured a suite of 12 functional traits and herbivore damage on three genotypic cross types in the prairie forb, Echinacea...

Pollen limitation of plant reproduction occurs in many plant species, particularly those in fragmented habitat; however, causes of pollen limitation are often unknown. We investigated the relationship between pollen limitation and pollinator visitation in the purple coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia (Asteraceae), which grows in the extremely fragmented tallgrass prairie of North America. Previous investigations showed that po...