Echoes of ancestry: a phylogenetic signal gradient across seed functional traits

1. Seed traits underpin plant regeneration, shaping dispersal, dormancy, germination and early establishment, yet remain underrepresented in trait-based ecology relative to vegetative traits. This imbalance limits our understanding of how regeneration strategies evolve and respond to environmental change. 2. We synthesize published estimates of phylogenetic signal across seed functional traits using a curated compilation of 217 studies. We aim to assess (i) how phylogenetic signal is distributed across seed trait domains, (ii) whether different components of seed biology vary systematically in their degree of evolutionary constraint, (iii) the mechanisms underlying this variation, and (iv) how phylogenetic structure relates to ecological function and environmental filtering.