The Causes and Consequences of Seed Dispersal

Abstract

Seed dispersal, or the movement of diaspores away from the parent location, is a multiscale, multipartner process that depends on the interaction of plant life history with vector movement and the environment. Seed dispersal underpins many important plant ecological and evolutionary processes such as gene flow, population dynamics, range expansion, and diversity. We review exciting new directions that the field of seed dispersal ecology and evolution has taken over the past 40 years. We provide an overview of the ultimate causes of dispersal and the consequences of this important process for plant population and community dynamics. We also discuss several emergent unifying frameworks that are being used to study dispersal and describe how they can be integrated to provide a more mechanistic understanding of dispersal. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Volume 54 is November 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Optimal Selection of Seed-Trees Using the Multi-Objective NSGA-II Algorithm and a Seed Dispersal Model

“…While the proposed methodology offers valuable insights into optimal seed-tree selection, it is crucial to acknowledge inherent limitations and challenges. A significant constraint lies in the uncertainty associated with seed dispersal estimation [16,55]. Notably, [38], conducting research in the same stand, proposed a different dispersal model utilizing genetic markers for mother tree identification, while, even in our study there were other alternative models, such as the Gamma, that could have been used for modeling.…”

Climate and habitat type interact to influence contemporary dispersal potential in Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum)

“…Seed dispersal, or the movement of offspring away from the source parent plant, provides the opportunity for migration (Zobel et al., 2010 ), gene flow (Sexton et al., 2009 ), range shifts (Davis & Shaw, 2001 ; Hargreaves et al., 2015 ), and spatial tracking of favorable environmental conditions (Brehm et al., 2019 ; Edelaar & Bolnick, 2012 )—all of which allow for species persistence despite local extirpation (Tilman, 1994 ). Indeed, dispersal evolves even in the simplest systems with homogenous environments (Hamilton & May, 1977 ) and is especially important for sessile organisms, such as plants, that have limited opportunities during their life cycle for movement (Beckman & Sullivan, 2023 ). In heterogeneous habitats, environmental conditions are an important driver of plant dispersal ability, which can manifest locally through differences in physical properties of the environment (e.g., soil depth, habitat structure, fragmentation) as well as in a more broad‐scale way through the climate in the year of reproduction (Hernandez et al., 2023 ).…”

“…In an era of multiple anthropogenic global changes that simultaneously act on plant populations, it is imperative to determine how the local environment and climate singly and jointly influence plants' dispersal ability. Here, we focus on species that disperse their seeds by wind (anemochory), as those species are likely to be sensitive to environmental change (Beckman & Sullivan, 2023 ).…”