Biodiv Sci ›› 2018, Vol. 26 ›› Issue (9): 919-930.  DOI: 10.17520/biods.2018101

• Original Papers: Plant Diversity •     Next Articles

Nine-year seed rain dynamics in Parashorea chinensis forest in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China

Lina Dou1,2, Wenfu Zhang1, Xiaobao Deng1, Min Cao1,*(), Yong Tang1   

  1. 1 CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan 666303
    2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049
  • Received:2018-04-04 Accepted:2018-05-15 Online:2018-09-20 Published:2019-01-05
  • Contact: Cao Min
  • About author:# Co-first authors

Abstract:

Seed rain patterns are a crucial influence on plant regeneration. Although it is very challenging to understand the dynamics of seed rain, long-term monitoring of seeds can provide useful insights. In this study, we monitored seed rain patterns of forests dominated by Parashorea chinensis in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China for nine years. We recorded 8,993,224 seeds belonging to 226 species, between May 2008 and April 2017. We categorized seeds of 77 species as large, 61 species as medium, 72 species as small, 13 species as tiny, 1 species as infinitesimally grainy seed and 2 species as filamentous. More than 70% of all seeds belong to the top 10 dominant species. Seeds of all types showed pronounced inter-annual variation for both seed number and species number. At least one mast seeding was observed for each of the seed type during nine years.

http://jtp.cnki.net/bilingual/detail/html/SWDY201809001

Key words: tropical forest, seed rain, species composition, inter-annual variation, mast seeding