Data from: Does the reduction of seed dormancy during ex situ cultivation affect the germination and establishment of plants reintroduced into the wild?
Data files
Dec 28, 2022 version files 69.24 KB
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Ensslin_etal_germination_field.csv
1.77 KB
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Ensslin_etal_germination_lab.csv
3.44 KB
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Ensslin_etal_germination_outdoor.csv
979 B
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Ensslin_etal_performance_transplantation.csv
53.42 KB
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Ensslin_etal_total_fitness_aggregated.csv
4 KB
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README.md
5.62 KB
Abstract
1. Plants or seeds produced in botanic gardens or nurseries have become an important source of plant material for reintroductions or population reinforcements. However, recent research has shown that these living collections bear the risk of being genetically impoverished and adapted to the artificial habitat. In particular, many studies have reported a decline of seed dormancy during ex situ cultivation, which may compromise their suitability for reintroduction programs. However, the impact of those ex situ-derived changes on the germination and establishment of reintroduced plant populations is still unclear.
2. We studied the germination behaviour, population establishment and plant fitness over three years of reintroduced plants of the short-lived perennial Digitalis lutea, comparing plants grown from (1) a 30-year botanic garden population, (2) seeds from a seed bank representing the initial starting point of the botanic garden culture, and (3) a re-sampled corresponding wild population.
3. Under laboratory conditions, wild-collected seeds required cold stratification to germinate, whereas seeds from the garden population germinated without stratification. This pattern was strongly reduced in an outdoor pot experiment, where only a few garden seeds germinated before winter, and all seeds remained dormant when seeded in the natural area of origin. In a transplant experiment, reintroduced plants from the wild population outperformed both, the garden and the seed bank plants, in their fitness in the first 3 years after reintroduction suggesting adaptation to current climatic conditions.
4. Synthesis and Applications: Our study demonstrates that trait changes that occurred during ex situ cultivation can negatively impact the establishment of reintroduced plants. We conclude that wild plant material collected from contemporary populations is best suited for reintroduction and should be preferred over ex situ-cultivated and seed bank stored material, especially when the cultivation spanned multiple generations. However, our study also shows that germination requirements change in complex ways, and the loss of dormancy observed under laboratory conditions may not always be directly transferable to natural conditions. When established standards are respected, ex situ propagated material may thus still be a valuable resource, especially when wild material is not available in sufficient quantities.
Methods
The data is divided into 5 datasets:
1: germination_lab: is the germination rates of seeds of Digitalis lutea germinated in Petri dishes. Germination is calculated per Petri dish in percentage
2: germination_outdoor: is the germination of seeds of Digitalis lutea in outdoor pots after outdoor overwintering of the seeds in pots. Germination is a ratio (from 0 to 1).
3: germination_field: is the germination of seeds of Digitalis lutea in the field in iron rings pushed into the ground. Germination is a ratio (from 0 to 1).
4: performance_transplantation: is the performance of Digitalis lutea plants transplanted into three different sites and survival and performance (and flowering) measured over three consecutive years (2017-2019).
5: total_fitness_aggregated: is the TotalFit is the cummulative flower number as calculated by Leverich & Levin 1979 and as called total fitness in these analyses. TotalFit has been calculated from the performance_transplantation file and is aggregated on the seed family level.