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Seed rain and seed banks cannot supply missing diversity to the aboveground flora in reconstructed prairies

K. Carter Wynne,Lauren L. Sullivan

Published 2025 in Restoration Ecology

ABSTRACT

Seed‐based restoration is a viable method for alleviating the loss of tallgrass prairies by creating new assemblages of prairie flora. Despite using diverse inputs of native seeds, restoration efforts frequently fall short of plant diversity goals. Ambient seed sources, such as the seed rain and seed bank, could provide missing diversity to restorations, but our understanding of their relationship to the flora remains unclear. To understand how these sources influence vital aspects of prairie communities during restoration, we conducted a holistic survey of the aboveground flora, seed rain, and seed bank in a remnant and nearby chronosequence of reconstructed Missouri prairies (i.e. new communities seeded into post‐agricultural land). We found that while tallgrass prairies produce extraordinary amounts of diverse seed inputs, most of these species are not found in seed banks, especially in older reconstructed and remnant prairies. Although native diversity of the aboveground flora, seed rain, and seed bank in reconstructions was eventually comparable to remnant prairie, the composition of these life‐stage communities in the oldest reconstruction remained divergent from the remnant. Furthermore, the composition of the aboveground flora became less similar to that of the seed rain and seed bank over time, suggesting that seed inputs are most influential at early stages of reconstruction. Species missing from the aboveground flora but present in the seed rain and seed bank tended to be undesirable to reconstruction efforts (e.g. weedy and not typically found in mature tallgrass prairie). Reconstructing populations of chronically missing and rare species will likely require further intervention.

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