According to Csontos (2001), seed bank consists of all the naturally occurring seeds that are independent from their mother plants’ metabolism and either able to germinate or able to acquire this ability in the future. Several classification systems have been proposed for seed bank types, but Thompson’s system (Thompson 1992) is the most well-known and most accepted of them. Thompson described three categories based on the ability of a species’ seeds to remain viable in the soil: (i) transient seed bank – seeds remain viable for less than one year, (ii) short-term persistent seed bank – seeds remain viable for more than one year, but less than 5 years, and (iii) long-term persistent seed bank – seeds remain viable for more than 5 years. However, the boundary between the first two categories is often not evident and difficult to detect (Thompson et al. 1993), so in our database we only distinguish transient and persistent seed banks.
To avoid the confounding effect of different climatic and environmental conditions in general, we only considered the results of seed bank studies carried out in Hungary (Csontos 2001, Csontos et al. 2016, Matus et al. 2003, Tóth 2015, Török 2008, and Valkó et al. 2014). Based on the Seed Longevity Index of Bekker et al. (1998), we express the ratio of data indicating a persistent soil seed bank with a value from 0 to 1, where zero means that all available data indicates a transient seed bank, and 1 means that all available data indicates a persistent seed bank.
Data source and citation:
The range of sources that is to be cited is up to the user based on the range of the used data.
Csontos, P. (2001) A természetes magbank kutatásának módszerei. Synbiologia Hungarica, Scientia Kiadó, Budapest.
Csontos, P., Kalapos, T. & Tamás, J. (2016) Comparison of seed longevity for thirty forest, grassland and weed speciesof the Central European Flora: Results of a seed burial experiment. Polish Journal of Ecology 64: 313–326.
Matus, G., Tóthmérész, B. & Papp, M. (2003) Restoration prospects of abandoned species-rich sandy grasslands in Hungary. Applied Vegetation Science 6: 169–178.
Sonkoly, J., Tóth, E., Balogh, N., Balogh, L., Bartha, D. ... Török, P. (2022) PADAPT 1.0 – the Pannonian Database of Plant Traits. bioRxiv, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.05.519136
Tóth, K. (2015) A Magbank szerepe a természetes gyepek diverzitásának fenntartásában és a gyepregenerációban. Doktori disszertáció, Debreceni Egyetem
Török, P. (2008) A magkészlet szerepe mészkerülő gyepek rehabilitációjában. Doktori disszertáció, Debreceni Egyetem
Valkó, O., Török, P., Tóthmérész, B., & Matus, G. (2011) Restoration potential in seed banks of acidic fen and dry‐mesophilous meadows: can restoration be based on local seed banks? Restoration Ecology 19: 9–15.
Other references:
Bekker, R. M., Bakker, J. P., Grandin, U., Kalamees, R., Milberg, P., Poschlod, P., ... & Willems, J. H. (1998) Seed size, shape and vertical distribution in the soil: indicators of seed longevity. Functional Ecology 12: 834–842.
Thompson, K. (1992) The functional ecology of seed banks. Seeds: the Ecology of Regeneration in Plant Communities (ed. M. Fenner), pp. 231–258. CAB International, Wallingford, UK.
Thompson, K., Band, S.R. & Hodgson, J.G. (1993) Seed size and shape predict persistence in soil. Functional Ecology 7: 236–241.
