Seeds integrate biological information about conspecific and allospecific neighbours.

Numerous organisms integrate information from multiple sources and express adaptive behaviours, but how they do so at different developmental stages remains to be identified. Seeds, which are the embryonic stage of plants, need to make decisions about the timing of emergence in response to environmental cues related to survival. We investigated the timing of emergence of (Plantaginaceae) seed while manipulating the presence of seed and the relatedness of neighbouring seed. The relatedness of neighbouring seed and the presence of seeds of did not on their own influence the timing of emergence. However, when encountering a seed, a seed emerged faster in the presence of a sibling seed than in the presence of a non-sibling seed. Water extracts of seeds gave the same result. We show that seeds integrate information about the relatedness of neighbouring seeds and the presence of seeds of a different species via water-soluble chemicals and adjust their emergence behaviour in response. These findings suggest the presence of kin-dependent interspecific interactions.