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Persistent soil seed banks promote naturalisation and invasiveness in flowering plants

Gioria, Margherita; Carta, Angelino; Baskin, Carol C.; Dawson, Wayne; Essl, Franz; Kreft, Holger; Pergl, Jan; Kleunen, Mark; Weigelt, Patrick; Winter, Marten; Pyšek, Petr

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Authors

Margherita Gioria

Angelino Carta

Carol C. Baskin

Franz Essl

Holger Kreft

Jan Pergl

Mark Kleunen

Patrick Weigelt

Marten Winter

Petr Pyšek



Abstract

With globalisation facilitating the movement of plants and seeds beyond the native range, preventing potentially harmful introductions requires knowledge of what drives the successful establishment and spread of alien plants. Here, we examined global-scale relationships between naturalisation success (incidence and extent) and invasiveness, soil seed bank properties (type and densities) and key species traits (seed mass, seed dormancy and life form) for 2350 species of angiosperms. Naturalisation and invasiveness were strongly associated with the ability to form persistent (vs. transient) seed banks but relatively weakly with seed bank densities and other traits. Our findings suggest that seed bank persistence is a trait that better captures the ability to become naturalised and invasive compared to seed traits more widely available in trait databases. Knowledge of seed persistence can contribute to our ability to predict global naturalisation and invasiveness and to identify potentially invasive flowering plants before they are introduced.

Citation

Gioria, M., Carta, A., Baskin, C. C., Dawson, W., Essl, F., Kreft, H., …Pyšek, P. (2021). Persistent soil seed banks promote naturalisation and invasiveness in flowering plants. Ecology Letters, 24(8), https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13783

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 19, 2021
Online Publication Date May 24, 2021
Publication Date 2021
Deposit Date Sep 20, 2021
Publicly Available Date Sep 20, 2021
Journal Ecology Letters
Print ISSN 1461-023X
Electronic ISSN 1461-0248
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 24
Issue 8
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13783

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.




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