Studies assessing the biological impacts of climate change typically rely on long-term, historic data to measure trait responses to climate through time. Here, we overcame the problem of absent historical data by using resurrected seeds to capture historic plant trait data for a number of plant regeneration and growth traits. We collected seed and seedling trait measurements from resurrected historic seeds and compared these with modern seed and seedling traits collected from the same species in the same geographic location. We found a total of 43 species from South-Eastern Australia for which modern/historic seed pairs could be located. These species were located in a range of regions that have undergone different amounts of climate change across a range of temperature, precipitation and extreme measures of climate. There was a correlation between the amount of change in climate metrics, and the amount of change in plant traits. Using stepwise model selection, we found that for all regeneration and growth trait changes (except change in stem density), the most accurate model selected at least two measures of climate change. Changes in extreme measures of climate such as heatwave duration and changes in climate variability were more strongly related to changes in regeneration and growth traits than changes in mean climate metrics. Across our species, for every 5% increase in temperature variability, there was a three-fold increase in the probability of seed viability and seed germination success. An increase of one day in the maximum duration of dry spells through time led to a 1.5-fold decrease in seed viability and seeds became 30% flatter/thinner. Regions where the maximum heatwave duration had increased by ten days saw a 1.35 cm decrease in seedling height and a 1.04 g decrease in seedling biomass. Rapid responses in plant traits to changes in climate may be possible, however, it is not clear whether these changes will be fast enough for plants to keep pace with future climate change.

中文翻译：

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穿越时空的种子揭示了植物的再生和生长特性正在对气候变化做出反应

评估气候变化的生物影响的研究通常依赖于长期的历史数据来衡量随时间变化对气候的特征反应。在这里，我们通过使用复活的种子来捕获许多植物再生和生长性状的历史植物性状数据，克服了缺乏历史数据的问题。我们从复活的历史种子中收集种子和幼苗性状测量值，并将其与从同一地理位置的同一物种收集的现代种子和幼苗性状进行比较。我们在澳大利亚东南部总共发现了 43 种可以找到现代/历史种子对的物种。这些物种位于一系列地区，这些地区在一系列温度、降水和极端气候措施中经历了不同程度的气候变化。气候指标的变化量与植物性状的变化量之间存在相关性。使用逐步模型选择，我们发现对于所有再生和生长性状变化（茎密度变化除外），最准确的模型至少选择了两种气候变化措施。与平均气候指标的变化相比，极端气候指标的变化（例如热浪持续时间和气候变率的变化）与再生和生长特征的变化更密切相关。在我们的物种中，温度变化每增加 5%，种子活力和种子发芽成功的可能性就会增加三倍。随着时间的推移，干旱期的最长持续时间增加 1 天，导致种子活力降低 1.5 倍，种子变得更扁平/更薄 30%。最大热浪持续时间增加了 10 天的地区，幼苗高度减少了 1.35 厘米，幼苗生物量减少了 1.04 克。植物性状对气候变化的快速反应可能是可能的，但是，尚不清楚这些变化是否足够快以使植物跟上未来的气候变化。