To better understand the potentials of the soil seed banks in facilitating succession towards a more natural forest of native tree species, we quantified the size and composition of the soil seed banks in established plantations in South China. The seed banks were from four typical 22-year-old plantations, i.e., legume, mixed-conifer, mixed-native, and Eucalyptus overstory species. Species dive...

A survey was conducted to determine the density and species composition of viable seeds buried in four stands of a tropical montane forest at Parque Estadual Intervales, Brazil. The objective was to understand: (1) how numbers and composition of the soil seed bank change as the forest regrows, and (2) how such changes affect the species available for regeneration if forests of different ages ar...

The weed seed bank of a long-term tillage study in subarctic Alaska was studied at the end of 10 years of continuous spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Tillage treatments were: no-till, disked once (spring), disked twice (spring and fall), and chisel plow (fall). Soil cores were obtained from each tillage treatment and seeds were manually separated from soil after washing through sieves. Tilla...

This study investigated the effects of microhabitat characteristics on soil seed bank structure, regeneration strategies, and plant composition in a Mediterranean coastal sand dune in Israel. Three different microhabitats were selected: (a) open patches between shrubs, (b) shrub understorey, and (c) open, disturbed patches in pedestrian trails. In each microhabitat two types of sampling plots w...

Annual forbs form short-term persistent soil seed banks whereas perennial grasses form mostly transient ones in the central Monte desert. A conceptual framework predicts that annual forb seeds will have primary dormancy, whereas perennial grasses will have low dormancy levels. We assessed whether the dormancy traits of four annual forb species and five perennial grass species can account for th...

Background and aims A created tidal freshwater wetland, with no extant seed bank, was monitored to evaluate the colonization potential of a tidal river, vegetation and seed bank changes, and also species persistence. Methodology The 32.3-ha mitigation, adjacent to the Delaware River, was completed in 1994. Three sites, with differing completion dates, and three locations (channel edge, midpoint...

1 2 3 François Feer 1a , Jean-François Ponge a , Sylvie Jouard a and Doris Gomez b 4 5 a Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, CNRS UMR 7179, 4 avenue du Petit-Château, 6 91800 Brunoy, France 7 b Centre for Evolutionary and Functional Ecology, CNRS UMR 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 8 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France 9 10 1 Corresponding author ; e-mail : [email protected] 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 . ...

Weed management systems that rely less on chemical control are needed globally. Next to curative chemical weed control, there are other ways of tackling weed problems, such as (a) reduction of the weed seed bank in the soil, (b) reduced recruitment of weed seeds from the soil seed bank, and (c) strengthening the relative competitive ability of the crop. A number of case studies are presented in...

The vertical distribution of weed seeds in the soil is of fundamental importance because seedling emergence depends on seed depth. The lateral displacement of the earth during mouldboard ploughing contributes to the dispersal of the weeds inside the tilled field. In order to model vertical and lateral seed displacements during ploughing, an existing model describing soil particle movements for ...

Seed dispersal is one of the vehicles of gene flow in plants. If a seed carrying transgene(s) is dispersed into the environment, the fate can be determined by its persistence in the soil bank, which can also vary in different ecotypes of a species and the physical environment of the soil including temperature and moisture. This study aimed at investigating ecotypic differences in wild sorghum f...