Figure 1.

Transitioning in and out of a seed bank is analogous to the migration of individuals between populations. In (a), we see a population with a seed bank where individuals switch between active and dormant states. In (b), we see two populations where individuals can migrate between each population. An important difference between (a) and (b) is that individuals must originate in the active pool, because dormant individuals cannot reproduce. While dormant individuals can die in this model, their death rate is much lower than that of active individuals. This conceptual model was first presented in an ecological context (Lennon & Jones, 2011) and later used for the seed bank coalescent (Blath et al., 2015)