Seed mass and germination in an alpine meadow on the eastern Tsinghai–Tibet plateau

By H. Bu, Xuelin Chen, Xiu-wen Xu, Kun Liu, Peng Jia, G. Du. Plant Ecology, 2007

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this study, we built up a database of 570 species from an alpine meadow on the eastern Tsinghai–Tibet plateau. We examined the correlation of seed mass and germination with phylogeny, habitat and altitude, and the relationship between seed mass and germination. We found that: habitats had no significant effects on seed mass and germinability, which was in accord with the former studies; there was a significant negative correlation between seed mass and altitude, as well as between germinability and altitude, which was opposite to most of the former studies; there was a significant negative correlation between seed mass and germinability, which was in contrast with other studies that have found a positive relationship, and seed mass could explain 24.1% of total variation in germinability; in GLM, family and genus accounted for 43.9% and 83.9% of total variation in seed mass, and 34.1% and 65.4% in germinability, respectively, thus, it was evident that seed mass and germinability were strongly related to phylogeny. We considered that seed mass and germination might be the result of both selective pressures over long-term ecological time and the constraints over long-standing evolutionary history of the taxonomic membership. We suggest that correlates of ecology and phylogeny should be taken into account in comparative studies on seed mass and germination among species.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2109b46cf895a0a392ccdb95a50f066b728f269d

How researchers see this paper

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. Hui Guo
2. G. Du
3. S. Mazer

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. Hui Guo
2. G. Du
3. S. Mazer

In Plant Science

1. Hui Guo
2. G. Du
3. S. Mazer

Citations in the corpus

• Geographic variation in seed mass within and among nine species of Pedicularis (Orobanchaceae): effects of elevation, plant size and seed number per fruit (2010, background): “Bu et al. (2007) similarly found a negative correlation between elevation and seed mass in a flora of the eastern Tibetan Plateau.”