Factors Driving Seed Bank Diversity in Wetlands of a Large River Floodplain
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GENERAL WETLAND SCIENCE
Factors Driving Seed Bank Diversity in Wetlands of a Large River Floodplain Berenice Schneider 1 & Florencia Zilli 1 & Florencia Facelli 2 & Mirta Campana 1 Received: 9 November 2019 / Accepted: 10 August 2020 # Society of Wetland Scientists 2020
Abstract Soil seed banks serve as reservoirs of taxonomic and genetic diversity and can buffer the effect of perturbations on plant communities, and thus are critical for community resilience. We studied the relationship of seed bank abundance and richness with different hydrological attributes, evaluated beta diversity patterns among wetlands in the Middle Paraná River floodplain, and experimentally explored soil seed bank germination after a drought period. Seed abundance was positively related to drought intensity and, along with richness, negatively related to drought and flood frequency. Turnover and balanced variation in abundance greatly contributed to the total beta diversity probably associated with the environmental heterogeneity of the floodplain; nestedness had a lower contribution probably associated with different dispersal abilities of species. Germination behavior varied between rooted and free-floating plants. In conclusion, the soil seed banks studied are highly variable among habitats; drought and flood frequency, and drought intensity are related with the seed banks abundance and richness; and the germination responses after a drought phase differ among broad ecological groups of wetland plants. Keywords Plant propagules . Germination . Resilience . Hydrology . Middle Paraná River floodplain
Introduction Soil seed banks are important for plant communities because they serve as reservoirs of taxonomic and genetic diversity (Grime and Hillier 1992; Baskin and Baskin 2014a). By Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-020-01355-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Florencia Zilli [email protected] Berenice Schneider [email protected] Florencia Facelli [email protected] Mirta Campana [email protected] 1
Instituto Nacional de Limnología (INALI – UNL – CONICET), Ciudad Universitaria, C.P., 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina
2
Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias, Universidad Nacional del Litoral (FHUC – UNL), Ciudad Universitaria, C.P., 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina
allowing plants to store propagules until adequate germination conditions are met, the soil seed bank can buffer the effect of perturbations on plant communities (Leck and Brock 2000) and thus are critical for community resilience (Leck and Simpson 1995). This is particularly important in highly variable environments such as river floodplain systems where vegetation is exposed to recurrent droughts and flooding events (Junk et al. 1989; Neiff 1990). In river floodplain systems, the hydrological regime is the most important factor that controls the distribution and zonation of plants (Junk et al. 1989; Neiff 1990; Junk et al. 2006). The frequency (i.e. number of t
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