对种子生态学领域进行了简要总结,重点阐述了种子生态学4个研究方向的研究热点,即种子雨及种子散布生态学、种子重量生态学、土壤种子库的生态学、种子地理学等.该文首先阐述了种子雨及种子散布生态学的研究内容、研究方法、主要科学问题和研究结论、研究展望,然后分别阐述了其他3个研究方向的研究内容、科学问题和未来研究展望.

A brief summary on the concept of seed ecology is presented, and then its four hot research topics are introduced in detail. They are seed rain and seed dispersal ecology, seed mass ecology, soil seed bank ecology, and seed geography. On the basis of previous published theories, their research methods, research content, scientific questions, conclusions, and future research directions are addressed and summarized. Seed ecology is a developing science which studies the relationships between seed and its environment, it has lots of research contents, in which the relationships between seed germination and environment have been received more attention; however other aspects of seed ecology research are comparatively scant. Future research in seed rain are as follows: (1) to investigate seed rain characteristics of community or population types; (2) to observe seed rain for a long term; (3) to trace final destiny of dispersed seeds, and (4) to explore the geographical dispersal patterns of seed rain characteristics, such as densities of seed rain and species richness of seed rain. Future research directions related to seed mass are: (1) to explore co-evolutionary between seed mass and more micro-biological traits, such as cell biology, plant anatomy, biological chemistry; (2) to collect seeds in more regions and to found more relationships between biological macro-characteristics and seed characteristics combined with sampling materials based on more species. As for soil seed banks, future research works are: (1) to investigate species composition and seed densities of soil seed bank and its inter-annual dynamics; (2) to explore geographical variation patterns of soil seed bank traits. In seed geography, the following research regions should be paid attention to: (1) the geography of seed morphology and anatomy characteristics; (2) the geography of seed biochemical components; (3) the geography of seed physiological traits; (4) the geography of seed cell biology; (5) the geography of seed genetic traits, and (6) the geography of flowers and fruits.