Fourteen months of seed rain in three Australian semi‐arid communities

The abundance and composition of seed rain was measured over 14 months (February 2004 to March 2005) in Currawinya National Park, western Queensland. The experimental design included four measurement periods, three vegetation communities and two grazing regimes. A total of 12 586 seeds from 104 species were captured. There were significantly more seeds and species captured during the measurement period with the least rainfall, although no significant correlation was found between the amount of rainfall and the number of seeds or species captured. More seeds and species were captured where native and feral grazing pressure was removed, but this was only significant for the number of species. The above‐ground vegetation showed no significant difference between grazing treatments over the study period and exhibited far fewer species than the seed rain. However, the majority of species found in the above‐ground vegetation were represented in the seed rain. Hypotheses are explored as an attempt to understand the apparent lack of a relationship between seed rain and rainfall. The effects of grazing and seed movement and storage are also discussed.