Kiss Réka, Lukács Katalin, Tóth Ágnes, Tóth Benedek, Samraoui Kenz Raouf, Engel Rita, Deák Balázs, Valkó Orsolya
'Lendület' Seed Ecology Research Group, Institute of Ecology and Botany, HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, Vácrátót, Hungary.
National Laboratory for Health Security, HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, Budapest, Hungary.
BMC Ecol Evol. 2025 Aug 14;25(1):82. doi: 10.1186/s12862-025-02424-5.
Understanding germination characteristics, including optimal stratification requirements of target species, is necessary for supporting grassland restoration yet poorly understood. This knowledge is essential for effective conservation, particularly with climate change altering germination conditions and thus germination capacity of plants. Here we studied the effect of three different durations of warm dry and cold wet stratification treatments, and their combinations in a full factorial design (in total 15 different pre-germination treatments), on the germination capacity of 48 grassland species native to Central Europe. Stratification treatments modelled present and forecasted summer (1-3 months warm period) and winter (1-3 months cold period) temperature conditions, while the study of the combined effect of these treatments is especially important in spring-germinating species. As response variables, we calculated relative response indexes and germination uncertainties of each species separately and applied general linear models to study the effect of treatments on these variables. We found clear effect of warm- or cold stratification on relative response indexes only in four species: strong positive response to warm stratification was found in Silene conica, while strong positive response to cold stratification was found in Agrimonia eupatoria, Echium vulgare, and Plantago lanceolata. The responses to treatment combinations were contradictory or lacked clear trends in most of the species. Germination uncertainty in general was high for all species, supporting the fact that Central European grassland species often rely on bet hedging as risk spreading strategy, to avoid unfavourable conditions during seedling establishment.
了解发芽特性，包括目标物种的最佳分层要求，对于支持草地恢复至关重要，但目前人们对此了解甚少。这些知识对于有效的保护工作至关重要，尤其是在气候变化改变发芽条件从而影响植物发芽能力的情况下。在此，我们采用全因子设计（共15种不同的发芽前处理），研究了三种不同时长的暖干和冷湿分层处理及其组合对48种中欧本土草地物种发芽能力的影响。分层处理模拟了当前和预测的夏季（1 - 3个月暖期）和冬季（1 - 3个月冷期）温度条件，而研究这些处理的组合效应对于春季发芽的物种尤为重要。作为响应变量，我们分别计算了每个物种的相对响应指数和发芽不确定性，并应用一般线性模型来研究处理对这些变量的影响。我们发现，仅在四种物种中，暖分层或冷分层对相对响应指数有明显影响：圆锥蝇子草对暖分层有强烈的正响应，而龙芽草、蓝蓟和披针叶车前对冷分层有强烈的正响应。在大多数物种中，对处理组合的响应相互矛盾或缺乏明确趋势。总体而言，所有物种的发芽不确定性都很高，这支持了中欧草地物种通常依靠多样化策略作为风险分散策略来避免幼苗建立期间不利条件的这一事实。
