Colony Readiness: 2 Grasses: Resource Flow and Collective Flexibility

How clonal grasses enact coordinated growth through modular resource sharing and local inclinations.

Grasses exemplify modular integration at large spatial scales. Their rhizome networks and stolons connect multiple ramets, allowing colonies to exploit patchy environments while maintaining coherence and resilience.

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1. Ability: Distributed Resource Capture and Expansion

• The colony’s ability emerges from integrated networks of ramets:

  • Root systems collectively access heterogeneous soil nutrients.

  • Stolons and rhizomes enable coordinated horizontal expansion.

  • Stress buffering: if some ramets are damaged, others compensate, maintaining colony vitality.

• Ability is not reducible to any single ramet; it is expressed through the dynamic interplay of modules.

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2. Inclination: Local Biases Drive Flexible Growth

• Each ramet interprets micro-environmental cues:

  • Light gaps trigger directional growth.

  • Nutrient-rich patches bias allocation to roots versus shoots.

  • Local crowding or herbivory influences branching and reproductive investment.

• These inclinations are flexible, enabling adaptive partitioning of effort across the colony.

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3. Individuation: Partial Perspectives

• Ramets maintain semi-autonomy, making decisions relative to local conditions.

• Physiological integration aligns these local choices into coherent colony behaviour:

  • Resource-rich ramets may subsidise shaded ramets.

  • Vegetative and reproductive roles are distributed dynamically, not preassigned.

• Individuation is graded and perspectival, producing a colony that functions as a coordinated whole without central control.

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4. Conceptual Payoffs

• Explains adaptive plasticity in patchy or disturbed environments.

• Reveals how modular systems distribute labour (roots, shoots, flowering) contextually.

• Offers experimental predictions:

  • Alter nutrient availability in one patch → observe reallocation across colony.

  • Sever connections → test the role of integration in maintaining ability.

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5. Closing Reflections

Grasses illustrate how modularity and inclination interact to produce a coherent, flexible collective:

• Ability: networked ramets allow large-scale resource capture and expansion.

• Inclination: local micro-environment biases steer growth and reproduction.

• Individuation: ramets act perspectivally but collectively form the colony’s identity.

The field of readiness in grasses is a dynamic flow of potential, constantly shaped by local interpretation and networked integration.