However, there are three problems in these studies. Among the many environmental factors, temperature is perhaps more important in determining suitable conditions for seedling establishment, while other factors are germination triggers or cues. According to recent studies, it is reasonable to expect that, seed germination could be affected by phylogeny, , life history attributes such as seed size, , seed dispersal, life form, and environmental signals. The timing and level of germination strongly affect a plant's recruitment success and may consequently have implications for species migration. Seed germination is one of the most extensively researched areas in plant biology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. 40930533) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: This study was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. Received: NovemAccepted: ApPublished: June 3, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Xu et al. PLoS ONE 9(6):Įditor: Keping Ma, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Meanwhile, selection can maintain the association between germination behavior and the environmental conditions within a lineage.Ĭitation: Xu J, Li W, Zhang C, Liu W, Du G (2014) Variation in Seed Germination of 134 Common Species on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau: Phylogenetic, Life History and Environmental Correlates. Therefore, germination variation are constrained mainly by phylogenetic inertia in a community, and seed germination variation correlated with phylogeny is also associated with life history attributes, suggesting a role of niche adaptation in the conservation of germination variation within lineages. In addition, there were strong associations between phylogenetic group and life history attributes, and between life history attributes and environmental factors. Multi-factorial ANOVAs showed that the three major factors contributing to differences in germination percentage and mean germination time in this alpine/subalpine meadow were phylogenetic attributes, temperature and seed size (explained 10.5%, 4.7% and 1.4% of the variance in germination percentage independently, respectively and explained 14.9%, 13.5% and 2.7% of the variance in mean germination time independently, respectively). Our results demonstrated that elevated temperature would lead to a significant increase in germination percentage and an accelerated germination. In one-way ANOVAs, phylogenetic groups (at or above order) explained 13.0% and 25.9% of the variance in germination percentage and mean germination time, respectively life history attributes, such as seed size, dispersal mode, explained 3.7%, 2.1% of the variance in germination percentage and 6.3%, 8.7% of the variance in mean germination time, respectively the environmental factors temperature and habitat explained 4.7%, 1.0% of the variance in germination percentage and 13.5%, 1.7% of the variance in mean germination time, respectively. In this study, we examined the effects of phylogenetic, life history and environmental factors on seed germination of 134 common species from an alpine/subalpine meadow on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Seed germination is a crucial stage in the life history of a species because it represents the pathway from adult to offspring, and it can affect the distribution and abundance of species in communities.