We attempted to confirm that seed banks can be viewed as an important genetic reservoir by testing the hypothesis that standing (aboveground) plants represent a nonrandom sample of the seed bank. We sampled multilocus allozyme genotypes from three species with different life history strategies: Amaranthus retroflexus, Carduus acanthoides, Pastinaca sativa. In four populations of each species we...

Moshe Lapidot, Department of Virology, Ilan Paran, Department of Plant Genetics, and Rachel Ben-Joseph, Department of Virology, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel; Serge Ben-Harush, Hazera Seed Company Kiryat Gat, Israel; and Meir Pilowsky, Department of Plant Genetics, Shlomo Cohen, Department of Virology, and Chen Shifriss, Department of Plant Gene...

In tropical forests, pioneer tree species regenerate from seeds dispersed directly into canopy gaps and from seeds that persisted in soil seed banks before gap formation. Life-history models have suggested that selection for the long-term persistence of tree seeds in the soil should be weak because persistence potentially reduces population growth rate by extending generation time and because a...

The results of field survey, germination and correspondence analysis showed that the soil seed banks density ranged from 900 to 6,467 seeds m at 0-5 cm depth and 117 to 2,467 seeds m at 5-10 cm depth, with species richness of 7-14. Early successional species dominated the soil seed bank, while later successional species occurred only at low density. The similarity between soil seed bank and sta...

BACKGROUND Problem weeds in agriculture, such as Lolium rigidum Gaud., owe some of their success to their large and dormant seed banks, which permit germination throughout a crop-growing season. Dormant weed seed banks could be greatly depleted by application of a chemical that stimulates early-season germination and then kills the young seedlings. Fluridone, a phytoene desaturase-inhibiting he...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Despite differences in physiology between dry and relative moist seeds, seed ageing tests most often use a temperature and seed moisture level that are higher than during dry storage used in commercial practice and gene banks. This study aimed to test whether seed ageing under dry conditions can be accelerated by storing under high-pressure oxygen. methods: Dry barley (Horde...

Abundance, species composition, and distribution of buried seeds in a San Francisco Bay salt marsh were studied by collecting soil samples in October and February and observing seedling emergence in the greenhouse. Results were compared with existing vegetation patterns and field germination. Average numbers of buried viable seed down to a 5-cm depth were 380/ m2 in October and 700/m2 in Februa...

Seed dispersal provides a template upon which the demographic processes of plant life cycles operate and, most importantly, seed dispersal determines the spatial distribution of genetic variation. Here, we review recent studies on seed dispersal by water (hydrochory) in species of Hibiscus to elucidate the potential ecological and evolutionary consequences of hydrochory at different spatiotempo...