Seed Survival at Low Temperatures: A Potential Selecting Factor Influencing Community Level Changes in High Altitudes under Climate Change.
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Resource type
Journal article
Date published
November 26, 2020
Abstract
In alpine ecosystems, imbibed seeds are often exposed to temperatures as low as −35 °C, challenging their survival in the soil. Here, we show that seeds have mechanisms to survive cold climate prevalent in alpine ecosystems and have identified three such mechanisms from existing literature, including two forms of freezing avoidance (the presence of water impermeable seed coats, and the supercooling of seed tissues) and one form of freezing tolerance (by extracellular-freezing). Experimentally-derived published data on the lowest temperature recorded at which 50% of a seed sample survived (i.e., lethal temperature; LT50) was used to generate a dataset of 24 species across low altitude, boreal and alpine environments. We assumed that the ability of seeds to maintain viability at very low temperatures would increase in species associated with higher altitudes conferring a competitive advantage that would be lost under projected climate change. However, our results reveal to underpin that seeds from boreal species survive relatively better at lower temperatures than those of alpine species. Paradoxically, a warming climate could lead to alpine seed death due to extremes of cold at the soil surface resulting from snow cover loss, whilst the declining snow cover may facilitate boreal forest colonization above the current treeline.
Funder
| Funder name | Awards |
National Natural Science Foundation of China, China | Grant number 31750110474 - Grant number 32001119 |
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK Government, United Kingdom | |
Journal title
Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences
Volume
39
Issue
6
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Place of publication
UK
ISSN
0735-2689
eISSN
1549-7836
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright