Seed traits and phylogeny explain plants' geographic distribution

Abstract

Abstract. Understanding the mechanisms that shape the geographic distribution of plant species is a central theme of biogeography. Although seed mass, seed dispersal mode and phylogeny have long been suspected to affect species distribution, the link between the sources of variation in these attributes and their effects on the distribution of seed plants are poorly documented. This study aims to quantify the joint effects of key seed traits and phylogeny on species distribution. We collected the seed mass and seed dispersal mode from 1426 species of seed plants representing 501 genera of 122 families and used 4 138 851 specimens to model species distributional range size. Phylogenetic generalized least-squares regression and variation partitioning were performed to estimate the effects of seed mass, seed dispersal mode and phylogeny on species distribution. We found that species distributional range size was significantly constrained by phylogeny. Seed mass and its intraspecific variation were also important in limiting species distribution, but their effects were different among species with different dispersal modes. Variation partitioning revealed that seed mass, seed mass variability, seed dispersal mode and phylogeny together explained 46.82 % of the variance in species range size. Although seed traits are not typically used to model the geographic distributions of seed plants, our study provides direct evidence showing seed mass, seed dispersal mode and phylogeny are important in explaining species geographic distribution. This finding underscores the necessity to include seed traits and the phylogenetic history of species in climate-based niche models for predicting the response of plant geographic distribution to climate change.

Global patterns in the evolutionary relations between seed mass and germination traits

“…It has been well documented that the latitudinal gradient explain much of the global variation (> 51%) in seed mass (Moles et al, 2007), but this is the first report of the magnitude of seed mass variation within different dormancy types. Previous studies have also reasoned that global variation in seed mass might be an important driver of species distribution with more than 46% of variation in species distribution accounted for seed mass, seed mass variability and seed dispersal mode (Moles et al, 2007; Chen et al, 2022). Variation in seed mass can explain geographical ranges within which plants can thrive, leading to the different ecological strategies that have evolved in plants (Chen et al, 2022).…”

“…Previous studies have also reasoned that global variation in seed mass might be an important driver of species distribution with more than 46% of variation in species distribution accounted for seed mass, seed mass variability and seed dispersal mode (Moles et al, 2007; Chen et al, 2022). Variation in seed mass can explain geographical ranges within which plants can thrive, leading to the different ecological strategies that have evolved in plants (Chen et al, 2022). Moreover, empirical studies have reported that there is a trade-off between seed mass and seed dormancy (e.g.…”

Floristic richness and diversity of Bintuni mangrove, Bird's Head Peninsula, West Papua, Indonesia

“…The reproductive organs could come from another part of the terrestrial forest close to the shoreline; then, they reach the delta area to grow as vegetation establishments (Chen et al 2020;Correa et al 2022;Wendt et al 2022). The tidal mechanism affects the distribution of reproductive organs predominantly to the inland area since the high tide in the nature reserve and owing to the flat area leading to the rising water river surface.…”

Elevation and phylogeny shape herbaceous seed dormancy in a biodiversity hotspot of southwest China

“…Therefore, nonparametric analysis of variance (nonparametric ANOVA) with the Kruskal–Wallis test was used to assess dormancy percentage differences among species using the “kruskal.test” function in the stats package in R. As closely related species tend to have similar SDS (Felsenstein, 1985 ), Blomberg's K was calculated as an index of phylogenetic conservatism. Any K value significantly higher than zero can be regarded as trait evolution approaching Brownian motion to varying degrees (Chen et al, 2022 ). This metric was calculated using the “phylosig” function in the R package phytools with arcsine‐transformed mean dormancy percentages of all populations for each species (Baskin & Baskin, 2014 ).…”

“…As closely related species typically experience similar natural selection pressures and seed traits can be constrained by phylogenetic history, species with a common ancestor often exhibit similar SDS (Chen et al, 2022 ; Seglias et al, 2018 ). For example, morphological dormancy is considered the ancestral state of seed dormancy and is observed in primitive taxa such as Taxaceae, Ginkgoaceae, and Podocarpaceae (Finch‐Savage & Leubner‐Metzger, 2006 ).…”