DORMANCY AND GERMINATION IN A GUILD OF SONORAN DESERT ANNUALS

To investigate bet hedging and species coexistence in a guild of Sonoran Desert winter annuals, we subjected seeds of eight species to factorial combinations of summer treatments (varying temperature and precipitation), germination conditions (representative of early, middle, and late germination season temperatures and day lengths), and experiment trial dates (spanning the germination season). In keeping with bet hedging theory, we found that many viable seeds would not germinate in response to any combination of treatments (germination usually