Abstract
Soil seed banks represent a critical but hidden stock for potential future plant diversity on Earth. Here we compiled and analyzed a global dataset consisting of 15,698 records of species diversity and density for soil seed banks in natural plant communities worldwide to quantify their environmental determinants and global patterns. Random forest models showed that absolute latitude was an important predictor for diversity of soil seed banks. Further, climate and soil were the major determinants of seed bank diversity, while net primary productivity and soil characteristics were the main predictors of seed bank density. Moreover, global mapping revealed clear spatial patterns for soil seed banks worldwide; for instance, low densities may render currently species-rich low latitude biomes (such as tropical rain-forests) less resilient to major disturbances. Our assessment provides quantitative evidence of how environmental conditions shape the distribution of soil seed banks, which enables a more accurate prediction of the resilience and vulnerabilities of plant communities and biomes under global changes.
Highlights
Soil seed banks represent a critical but hidden stock for potential future plant diversity on Earth
We hypothesized that soil seed bank composition and density should show clear global patterns since environmental conditions vary geographically across the Earth
Climate and soil are the major determinants of seed bank diversity, while net primary productivity and soil characteristics are the main predictors of seed bank density
Summary
Soil seed banks represent a critical but hidden stock for potential future plant diversity on Earth. Our global database was derived from studies measuring soil seed bank diversity and density of natural plant communities across all continents, albeit with a strong data availability bias towards North America, Europe, eastern Asia and Oceania as compared to elsewhere (Fig. 1). Sampling area for soil seed bank diversity varied among studies, with 0.01 m2 being the most commonly reported (Supplementary Fig. 2), to which we standardized all data using a species-area curve (Supplementary Table 1).
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