DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qv9s4mwg4
title: Why flowers close at noon? A case study of an alpine species Gentianopsis paludosa (Gentianaceae)

description: This dataset contains data from a field experiments described in the
 paper: “Hou, Q., Zhao, X., Pang, X., Duan, M., Ehmet, N., Shao, W.,
 & Sun, K. (2022). Why flowers close at noon? A case study of an
 alpine species Gentianopsis paludosa (Gentianaceae). Ecology and
 Evolution, 12, e8490. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8490”. The experiment
 investigates the effects of temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), and
 illumination intensity (II) on G. paludosa's flower closure, and
 monitored the environmental changes inside and outside of the flowers,
 aiming to test the effect of floral closure on the stability of
 microenvironment inside the flower. Finally, the temporal petal closure is
 artificially interrupted and investigated its effects on reproductive
 fitness. In the first experiment, the floral movements of G. paludosa and
 microenvironmental climate conditions were monitored in the full bloom
 stage in the field. In the second experiment, to tested whether changed
 environmental conditions could influence floral movement, and, which
 environmental factors could influence floral movement, the following
 experiments were carried out. Firstly, to test whether changed ambient
 conditions would stimulate closing or re-opening respectively, conducted
 the following 9 treatments from then on, and recorded the corolla width
 per half-hour: (1) closing T; (2) opening T; (3) blooming T; (4) closing
 II; (5) opening II; (6) blooming II; (7) closing RH; (8) opening RH; (9)
 blooming RH. Secondly, the following treatments were conducted to explore
 whether changed environmental conditions would delay the floral closure:
 (1) blooming T; (2) blooming II; (3) blooming RH. Thirdly, the
 2-factor-combined treatments on full-blooming period and closed period
 flowers were conducted to test the effect of 2-factor-combined on flower
 closure. In the third experiment, the temperature and relative humidity
 inside and outside the flower were tested to explore whether floral
 closure provide a stable microenvironment condition inside the flower. In
 the fourth experiment, the effect of floral closure on seed production was
 tested in the field. 4 treatments were conducted when flowers opened: (1)
 compulsive openness; (2) forced closure; (3) delayed closure; (4) control
 group. Main results of the experiments are that (1) high/low temperature
 contributed more to the flower closure than low RH, while illumination
 intensity had no significant effect on it; (2) the medium temperature,
 relative humidity and illumination intensity (environmental conditions at
 10:00) did not delay flower closure when flowers at pre-closing period or
 stimulate reopen when flowers full closed; (3) floral closure provided a
 stable temperature condition and a higher RH condition inside the flower.;
 (4) compulsive opening and delayed closure of flowers decreased the
 seed-set ratio while no effect was found when flowers were forced to
 close..
description: The dataset was collected
 during a field study at the Alpine Meadow Ecosystem Scientific Research
 Station of Lanzhou University at Gannan and has been processed by
 paired-samples <i>t</i> test and ANOVA (SPSS 13.0) to produce
 a MS accepted for publication in Ecology and Evolution.