LAUSR

Advancing functional ecology depends fundamentally on the availability of data on reproductive traits, including those from tropical plants, which have been historically underrepresented in global trait databases. While some valuable databases have been recently created, they are mainly restricted to temperate areas and vegetative traits such as leaf and wood traits. Here, we present Rock n' Seeds, a database of seed functional traits and germination experiments from the Brazilian rock outcrop vegetation, recognized as outstanding centers of diversity and endemism. Data were compiled through a systematic literature search, resulting in 103 publications from which seed functional traits were extracted. The database includes information for sixteen functional traits for 383 taxa from 148 genera, 50 families and 25 orders. These sixteen traits include two dispersal, six production, four morphological, two biophysical and two germination traits; the major axes of the seed ecological spectrum. The database also provides the raw data for 48 germination experiments for a total of 10,187 records for 281 taxa are also provided. Germination experiments in the database assessed the effect of a wide range of abiotic and biotic factors on germination and different dormancy-breaking treatments. Notably, 8,255 of these records include daily germination counts. This input will facilitate synthesizing germination data and using this database for a myriad of ecological questions. Given the variety of seed traits and the extensive germination information made available by this database, we expect it to be a valuable resource advancing comparative functional ecology and guiding seed-based restoration and biodiversity conservation in tropical megadiverse ecosystems. There are no copyright restrictions on the data; please cite this paper when using the current data in publications and the authors would appreciate notification of how the data are used in the publications.