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Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert

Agriophyllum squarrosum (L.) Moq. (Chenopodiaceae) is an annual pioneer psammophyte that is strictly distributed along desert margins. However, little is known about how this species adapts to shifting dunes. In this study, seeds bank was selected and germination behaviors of A. squarrosum were test...

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Autores principales: Liu, Meiling, Zhu, Ruiqing, Xie, Huichun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9673764/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36405019
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14395
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author Liu, Meiling
Zhu, Ruiqing
Xie, Huichun
author_facet Liu, Meiling
Zhu, Ruiqing
Xie, Huichun
author_sort Liu, Meiling
collection PubMed
description Agriophyllum squarrosum (L.) Moq. (Chenopodiaceae) is an annual pioneer psammophyte that is strictly distributed along desert margins. However, little is known about how this species adapts to shifting dunes. In this study, seeds bank was selected and germination behaviors of A. squarrosum were tested in laboratory. In addition, the effects of rainfall patterns on population dynamics were observed in field at the southeastern edge of the Tengger Desert. Soil seed bank density was significantly different in different depth of sand dunes. Under adequate water in Petri dishes, seeds began to germinate in less than 3 h and the germination peak was reached in seven days after watering. It showed that there is no innate dormancy of A. squarrosum. The buried experiments showed that the germination percentage decreased with increasing buried depth, and deeply buried seeds (10 cm) remained ungerminated. Population dynamics in different rainfall pattern of three years in field showed that germination, survival and deaths of A. squarrosum were extremely sensitive to rainfall variation. Our results suggest that precipitation is the key factor in determining population of A. squarrosum. The germination strategy of A. squarrosum ensures the efficiency use of unpredicted and scarce precipitation. The high disturbance of moving sand endowed persistence seed bank of A. squarrosum, which is essential for population continuation, avoiding population extinction under unpredicted precipitation.
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spelling pubmed-96737642022-11-19 Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert Liu, Meiling Zhu, Ruiqing Xie, Huichun PeerJ Ecology Agriophyllum squarrosum (L.) Moq. (Chenopodiaceae) is an annual pioneer psammophyte that is strictly distributed along desert margins. However, little is known about how this species adapts to shifting dunes. In this study, seeds bank was selected and germination behaviors of A. squarrosum were tested in laboratory. In addition, the effects of rainfall patterns on population dynamics were observed in field at the southeastern edge of the Tengger Desert. Soil seed bank density was significantly different in different depth of sand dunes. Under adequate water in Petri dishes, seeds began to germinate in less than 3 h and the germination peak was reached in seven days after watering. It showed that there is no innate dormancy of A. squarrosum. The buried experiments showed that the germination percentage decreased with increasing buried depth, and deeply buried seeds (10 cm) remained ungerminated. Population dynamics in different rainfall pattern of three years in field showed that germination, survival and deaths of A. squarrosum were extremely sensitive to rainfall variation. Our results suggest that precipitation is the key factor in determining population of A. squarrosum. The germination strategy of A. squarrosum ensures the efficiency use of unpredicted and scarce precipitation. The high disturbance of moving sand endowed persistence seed bank of A. squarrosum, which is essential for population continuation, avoiding population extinction under unpredicted precipitation. PeerJ Inc. 2022-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9673764/ /pubmed/36405019 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14395 Text en ©2022 Liu et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Liu, Meiling
Zhu, Ruiqing
Xie, Huichun
Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert
title Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert
title_full Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert
title_fullStr Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert
title_full_unstemmed Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert
title_short Responses of germination strategy of Agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the Tengger desert
title_sort responses of germination strategy of agriophyllum squarrosum to rainfall pattern in the tengger desert
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9673764/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36405019
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14395
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AT xiehuichun responsesofgerminationstrategyofagriophyllumsquarrosumtorainfallpatterninthetenggerdesert