Ex situ cultivation entails high risk of seed dormancy loss on short-lived wild plant species

1. Changes in life-history traits such as seed dormancy during cultivation of wild plant species in ex situ facilities could jeopardise conservation actions such as revegetation and plant reintroductions, but the magnitude of these risks and their spread across different plant taxa is unknown. 2. In this study, we explored whether plants cultivated in the Botanic Garden Meise differ in seed germination characteristics from plants from natural populations. Using a Bayesian approach of a phylogenetically informed generalized linear mixed model, we analysed germination tests of 72 herbaceous plant species from 27 plant families, originating from the cultivation beds in Meise as well as directly from wild populations. We investigated whether garden-collected seeds differ in germination percentage, seed dormancy and germination speed from wild-collected seeds. Furthermore, by analysing literature-collected information of 24 life-history traits, we sought to identify potential selection press...