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Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae

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 germina...

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Autores principales: Jaganathan, Ganesh K., Biddick, Matthew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715099/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975968
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.782706
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author Jaganathan, Ganesh K.
Biddick, Matthew
author_facet Jaganathan, Ganesh K.
Biddick, Matthew
author_sort Jaganathan, Ganesh K.
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-87150992021-12-30 Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae Jaganathan, Ganesh K. Biddick, Matthew Front Plant Sci Plant Science 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8715099/ /pubmed/34975968 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.782706 Text en Copyright © 2021 Jaganathan and Biddick. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Plant Science
Jaganathan, Ganesh K.
Biddick, Matthew
Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae
title Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae
title_full Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae
title_fullStr Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae
title_full_unstemmed Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae
title_short Experimental Warming Hastens Physical Dormancy Break and Germination in Tropical Fabaceae
title_sort experimental warming hastens physical dormancy break and germination in tropical fabaceae
topic Plant Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715099/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975968
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.782706
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