The Escape Hypothesis: A Test Involving a Temperate, Annual Grass

The escape hypothesis predicts a greater probability of survival for seeds that are dispersed farther away from an isolated parent plant. This hypothesis was examined for Panicum miliaceum L., an annual grass that grows as an agrestal weed or as a crop. The patterns of seeds and mature offspring surrounding each of twenty parent plants were mapped. For those cases involving a large sample size, the average distance of the mature offspring from the parent plant was significantly (p