Abstract
Climate warming may threaten the germination strategies of many plants that are uniquely adapted to today’s climate. For instance, species that employ physical dormancy (PY) – the production of seeds that are impermeable to water until high temperatures break them, consequently synchronizing germination with favorable growing conditions – may find that their seeds germinate during unfavorable or potentially fatal periods if threshold temperatures are reached earlier in the year. To explore this, we subjected the seeds of five species with physical dormancy (from the genera Abrus, Bauhinia, Cassia, Albizia, and Acacia) to “mild” (+2°C) and “extreme” (+4°C) future warming scenarios and documented their germination over 2 years relative to a control treatment. Under current climatic conditions, a proportion of seeds from all five species remained dormant in the soil for 2 years. A mild warming of 2°C had little to no effect on the germination of four of the five study species. Contrastingly, an extreme warming of 4°C dramatically increased germination in all five species within the first year, indicating a reduction in their ability to persist in the soil long-term. Cassia fistula was particularly susceptible to warming, exhibiting a similar increase in germination under both mild and extreme warming relative to control. Our findings suggest that climate warming in the tropics may cause the seeds of species that rely on physical dormancy to stagger the risk of unsuccessful germination across years to leave soil seed banks prematurely – the long-term implications of which remain unknown.
Highlights
The life cycle of plants is intricately linked to the climate
The Indian Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) has estimated that the temperature in the Western Ghats has increased by 1.7–1.8°C since the 1970’s and predicts a further increase of 3–4°C before the end of this century (Sharma and Chauhan, 2011)
Germination percentage was converted to proportion by multiplying 0.01 and subject to arcsinetransformation to promote normality
Summary
The life cycle of plants is intricately linked to the climate. May threaten life history strategies that have arisen over evolutionary timescales. Understanding how plant communities will respond to anthropogenic climate change has become an integral part of ecological research (Warren et al, 2013). Seeds are useful in this endeavor as they enable us to evaluate changes in vegetation at the community level (Walck et al, 2011). Many species have evolved dormancy mechanisms that regulate when germination takes place – an adaptation that enables plants to inhabit environments with volatile climates (FinchSavage and Leubner-Metzger, 2006; Willis et al, 2014). The warming of Earth’s climate could cause seeds to germinate at unfavorable times for seedling establishment, potentially
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