The role of maternal age, growth, and environment in shaping offspring performance in an aerial conifer seed bank.

ABSTRACT:

Premise

Maternal effects have been demonstrated to affect offspring performance in many organisms, and in plants, seeds are important mediators of these effects. Some woody plant species maintain long-lasting canopy seed banks as an adaptation to wildfires. Importantly, these seeds stored in serotinous cones are produced by the mother plant under varying ontogenetic and physiological conditions.

Methods

We sampled the canopy seed bank of a highly serotinous population of Pinus pinaster to test whether maternal age and growth and the environmental conditions during each crop year affected seed mass and ultimately germination and early survival. After determining retrospectively the year of each seed cohort, we followed germination and early survival in a semi-natural common g

SUBMITTER: Callejas-Diaz M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9790720 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature