# A global database of soil seed bank richness, density, and abundance

Alistair G Auffret, Emma Ladouceur, Natalie S Haussmann, Eirini Daouti, Tatiana G Elumeeva, Ineta Kačergytė, Jonas Knape, Dorota Kotowska, Matthew Low, Vladimir G Onipchenko, et al.

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Alistair G Auffret, Emma Ladouceur, Natalie S Haussmann, Eirini Daouti, Tatiana G Elumeeva, et al.. A global database of soil seed bank richness, density, and abundance. Ecology, 2024, 105 (11), 10.1002/ecy.4438 . hal-04948169

HAL Id: hal-04948169

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Submitted on 14 Feb 2025

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# A global database of soil seed bank richness, density, and abundance

Alistair G. Auffret<fnref n="1" /> ID

Emma Ladouceur<fnref n="2" />,<fnref n="3" />,<fnref n="4" />,<fnref n="5" /> ID

Natalie S. Haussmann<fnref n="6" /> ID

Eirini Daouti<fnref n="1" />,<fnref n="7" /> ID

Tatiana G. Elumeeva<fnref n="8" /> ID

Ineta Kačergytė<fnref n="1" /> ID

Jonas Knape<fnref n="1" /> ID

Dorota Kotowska<fnref n="9" />,<fnref n="10" /> ID

Matthew Low<fnref n="1" /> ID

Vladimir G. Onipchenko<fnref n="8" /> ID

Matthieu Paquet<fnref n="1" />,<fnref n="11" /> ID

Diana Rubene<fnref n="1" />,<fnref n="7" /> ID

Jan Plue<fnref n="12" /> ID

**Correspondence**

Alistair G. Auffret

Email: alistair.auffret@slu.se

**Handling Editor:** Hao Ye

**Abstract**

A soil seed bank is the collective name for viable seeds that are stored naturally in the soil. At the species or population level, the ability to form a seed bank represents a strategy for (re)colonization following a disturbance or other change in the local environmental conditions. At the community level, seed banks are thought to buffer local diversity during periods of environmental change and are often studied in relation to the potential for passive habitat restoration. The role that seed banks play in plant population and community dynamics, as well as their importance in the agricultural sector, means that they have been widely studied in ecological research. This database is the result of a comprehensive literature search, including all seed bank studies from the Web of Science from which data could be extracted, as well as an additional search of the Russian language literature. The database contains information on the species richness, seed

<footnote n="1">¹Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Department of Biology, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation, University of Prince Edward Island, St. Peter's Bay, Prince Edward Island, Canada</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴School of Climate Change and Adaptation, Faculty of Science, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵Biodiversity Synthesis, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Leipzig-Halle-Jena, Leipzig, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology, University of Pretoria, Hatfield, South Africa</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸Department of Ecology and Plant Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰Lendület Landscape and Conservation Ecology, Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Vácrátót, Hungary</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station (SETE), CNRS, Moulis, France</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden</footnote>

<footnote>This is an open access article under the terms of the [Creative Commons Attribution License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</footnote>

<footnote>© 2024 The Author(s). *Ecology* published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.</footnote>
density, and/or seed abundance in 3096 records from at least 1929 locations across the world's seven continents, extracted from 1442 studies published between 1940 and 2020. Records are grouped into five broad habitat categories (aquatic, arable, forest, grassland—including shrubland—and wetland), including information relating to habitat degradation from, or restoration to other habitats (total 14 combinations). Sampling protocols were also extracted for each record, and the database was extensively checked for errors. The location of each record was then used to extract summary climate data and biome classification from external published databases. The database has several potential uses. The large geographical spread relative to many other global biodiversity datasets is relevant for investigating patterns of diversity in biogeographical or macroecological contexts. Habitat type and status (intact, degraded, and restored) can be used to provide insights for biodiversity conservation, while the potential effects of sampling method and effort can be used to inform optimized data collection for future seed bank studies. This database is released under the CC-BY license.

### KEYWORDS

biodiversity, dispersal, global map, plants, seed bank, species richness

### CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

### DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data and code are available in Data S1 as Supporting Information. Data are also archived in the Swedish National Data Service at https://doi.org/10.5878/bvs7-gk47.

### ORCID

Alistair G. Auffret https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4190-4423

Emma Ladouceur https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4943-4358

Natalie S. Haussmann https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0314-0266

Eirini Daouti https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8609-4391

Tatiana G. Elumeeva https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0589-830X

Ineta Kačergytė https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4756-8253

Jonas Knape https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8012-5131

Dorota Kotowska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0358-3665

Matthew Low https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7345-6063

Vladimir G. Onipchenko https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1626-1171

Matthieu Paquet https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1182-2299

Diana Rubene https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5691-0378

Jan Plue https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6999-669X

### SUPPORTING INFORMATION

Additional supporting information can be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of this article.

**How to cite this article:** Auffret, Alistair G., Emma Ladouceur, Natalie S. Haussmann, Eirini Daouti, Tatiana G. Elumeeva, Ineta Kačergytė, Jonas Knape, et al. 2024. “A Global Database of Soil Seed Bank Richness, Density, and Abundance.” *Ecology* 105(11): e4438. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4438