Badlands, Seed Banks, and Community Disassembly
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-16-2019
Publication Title
Rangeland Ecology & Management
Abstract
Soil seed banks are a key component of ecological resilience as they provide a temporal reserve for plant species richness and diversity. Soil seed banks depend on on-site reproduction, seed longevity, and seed immigration for maintenance. When immigration of seeds is lost due to a change in land use or a disturbance, such as fragmentation, seed banks rely on on-site reproduction and longevity for maintenance. Within a fragment without seed immigration, seed banks become vulnerable to extinction debt leading to community disassembly over a long time scale. Therefore, we investigated how long-term fragmentation impacts community disassembly in seed banks. Seed bank samples were taken from grassland fragments (sod tables, n = 28) and from the surrounding area (matrix, n = 28). Seed banks were germinated, and emerging plants were identified. We found that community disassembly was not predictable in regard to species identity, and specialist (P...) (see full abstract in article).
Keywords
Fragmentation; Grassland; Great Plains; Resilience; Specialist species; Species diversity
Disciplines
Biodiversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Language
English
Repository Citation
Perkins, L. B.,
Ducheneaux, K. R.,
Hatfield, G.,
Abella, S. R.
(2019).
Badlands, Seed Banks, and Community Disassembly.
Rangeland Ecology & Management
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2019.05.004