Physical dormancy in seeds: a game of hide and seek?
Torbjørn Rage Paulsen, a PhD student from the Evolutionary Ecology research group at BIO, is first author on a paper that was selected this week as one of Science’s Editor’s Choice articles.
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Paulsen also works at the Department of Molecular Biology, in Prof. Arnt Raae's research group.
The paper’s title is “Physical dormancy in seeds: a game of hide and seek?”. The work explores the idea of hard seeds being an anti-predator trait. According to the paper’s abstract, the researchers are examining the hypothesis that hard seeds are an anti-predator trait that evolved in response to powerful selection by small mammal seed predators. They argue that physical dormancy has evolved to hide seeds from mammalian predators and conclude that this hypothesis also helps to explain some otherwise puzzling features of hard seeds and has implications for seed dispersal.
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Blog commentary from New Phytologist Trust
