Ecology of seagrass seeds and seagrass dispersal processes

Abstract

Seagrasses began colonizing the marine environment 100 million years ago in the Cretaceaous (den Hartog, 1970) and, like their terrestrial, wetland, and freshwater angiosperm counterparts, established a highly effective method of dispersal - seeds. While the terrestrial plant literature is replete with studies on all aspects of seed ecology, ranging from the importance of seed size and storage reserves, morphology, to dispersal and recruitment strategies (see reviews by Baskin and Baskin, 1998; Clark et al., 1998; Nathan and Muller-Landau, 2000; Higgins et al., 2003; Levin et al., 2003) research on the ecology of seagrass seeds has been remarkably sparse. © 2006/2007 Springer. All Rights Reserved.