- Title
- Lower dormancy with rapid germination is an important strategy for seeds in an arid zone with unpredictable rainfall
- Creator
- Duncan, Corrine; Schultz, Nick; Lewandrowski, Wolfgang; Good, Megan; Cook, Simon
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/170991
- Identifier
- vital:14222
- Identifier
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0218421
- Identifier
- ISBN:1932-6203
- Abstract
- Seed germination traits are key drivers of population dynamics, yet they are under-represented in community ecology studies, which have predominately focussed on adult plant and seed morphological traits. We studied the seed traits and germination strategy of eight woody plant species to investigate regeneration strategies in the arid zone of eastern Australia. To cope with stochastic and minimal rainfall, we predict that arid seeds will either have rapid germination across a wide range of temperatures, improved germination under cooler temperatures, or dormancy and/or longevity traits to delay or stagger germination across time. To understand how temperature affects germination responses, seeds of eight keystone arid species were germinated under laboratory conditions, and under three diurnal temperatures (30/20°C, 25/15°C and 17/7°C) for 30 days. We also tested for decline in seed viability across 24 months in a dry-aging treatment (
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science
- Relation
- PLoS ONE Vol. 14, no. 9 (2019), p.
- Rights
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Rights
- Copyright: © 2019 Duncan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- MD Multidisciplinary; Rain; Article; Circadian rhythm; Controlled study; Desert; Environmental temperature; Germination; Longevity; Nonhuman; Plant age; Plant reproduction; Plant seed; Seed dormancy; Survivor
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Hits: 4531
- Visitors: 4082
- Downloads: 140
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Published | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |