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. 2017 Nov 1;7:14786. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13833-y

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© The Author(s) 2017

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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A life-cycle model describing the demographic stages (boxes) and transitions (arrows) Posidonia australis follows to adulthood and the months each transition spanned. The transitions included; Seed-dependency, when seedlings are highly dependent on seed reserves, Sd (December_yr1–January_yr1). Seedlings then undergo an extended period where they continue to draw nourishment from maternally-derived reserves but there is greater uptake and assimilation of resources from the environment due to production of photosynthetically active leaves and development of a small but functional root system; autonomous development, Ad (January_yr1–April_yr1). By the end of this period seedlings have exhausted the majority (~90%) of their seed reserves and are relatively independent of their seed. Seedlings then become fully integrated into their environment upon exhaustion of the seed reserves; seedling establishment, Es (April_yr1–September_yr1). Production of new shoots, Ns (September_yr1–year 2) typically occurs in the months following seedling establishment and seedlings become Juveniles. Juveniles transition into adults after plants undergo horizontal vegetative expansion, Ve (year 2–3). Adults typically become reproductively mature, f (fecundity), between years 3–5.