Abstract: As one of the key stages in the seed life history, soil seed bank can effectively link the gene memory of past vegetation and the development trend of future vegetation, which drives ecological functions such as chasing the evolution mechanism of source vegetation, maintaining the species diversity of community, and restoring ecosystem. We summarized the research progress of soil seed banks across global terrestrial ecosystems and analyzed the species similarity relationships between soil seed bank and the aboveground vegetation in order to clarify community assembly mechanism, grasp community succession direction and scientifically guide ecological restoration projects. The differences of study regions or ecosystems had little effect on the relationship between soil seed bank and vegetation. Overall, the research results were dominated by low similarity, with relatively few cases of high similarity. The relationships between soil seed bank and vegetation could be explained by in abiotic filters, site history, and interspecific differences of seed production. A low similarity between soil seed bank and vegetation suggests that the role of soil seed bank in natural ecological recovery may be limited in target species within a stabilizing ecosystem. How-ever, serving as a foundational source for natural restoration, soil seed bank can effectively address the singular and unstable issues in artificial ecological restoration measures. The key challenge in implementing restoration projects for degraded ecosystems lies in how to leverage the characteristics of soil seed bank and complement them with suitable artificial interventions.

Key words: seed ecology, soil seed bank, aboveground vegetation, similarity, ecological restoration