PLANT FUNCTIONAL TRAITS IN RELATION TO FIRE IN CROWN-FIRE ECOSYSTEMS

By Juli G. Pausas, Ross A. Bradstock, David A. Keith, J. E. Keeley. 2004

651 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Disturbance is a dominant factor in many ecosystems, and the disturbance regime is likely to change over the next decades in response to land-use changes and global warming. We assume that predictions of vegetation dynamics can be made on the basis of a set of life-history traits that characterize the response of a species to disturbance. For crown-fire ecosystems, the main plant traits related to postfire persistence are the ability to resprout (persistence of individuals) and the ability to retain a persistent seed bank (persistence of populations). In this context, we asked (1) to what extent do different life- history traits co-occur with the ability to resprout and/or the ability to retain a persistent seed bank among differing ecosystems and (2) to what extent do combinations of fire- related traits (fire syndromes) change in a fire regime gradient? We explored these questions by reviewing the literature and analyzing databases compiled from different crown-fire ecosystems (mainly eastern Australia, California, and the Mediterranean basin). The review suggests that the pattern of correlation between the two basic postfire persistent traits and other plant traits varies between continents and ecosystems. From these results we predict, for instance, that not all resprouters respond in a similar way everywhere because the associated plant traits of resprouter species vary in different places. Thus, attempts to generalize predictions on the basis of the resprouting capacity may have limited power at a global scale. An example is presented for Australian heathlands. Considering the com- bination of persistence at individual (resprouting) and at population (seed bank) level, the predictive power at local scale was significantly increased.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66b7f7b0086d273e178e83d5c5974891ac6872c1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Global and Planetary Change

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Linking plant phenology to conservation biology (2016, background): “…studies evaluating the effects of fire on phenology have shown that, depending on the plant community, fire can stimulate flowering and fruiting (Pausas et al., 2004) and germination (e.g.Williams et al., 2005), elevate fruit production (Paritsis et al., 2006), and/or accelerate the…”
Towards an understanding of the evolutionary role of fire in animals (2018, background): “This has allowed the evolution of structural traits for in situ persistence (survival and population persistence; Pausas et al. 2004; Keeley et al. 2011).”
Biological and geophysical feedbacks with fire in the Earth system (2018, background): “On the other hand, fire regimes (see Box 1 for a definition) are in turn controlled by atmospheric conditions, climate, and the type of vegetation available as fuel (Krawchuk and Moritz 2011, Pausas et al 2004, Swetnam and Betancourt 1990).”
Fire as a global 'herbivore': the ecology and evolution of flammable ecosystems. (2005, methodology): “Ecologists working in Mediterranean-type shrublands find convergent fire-related plant traits on different continents [25, 26 ] but these are different from those of savannas.”
Traits to stay, traits to move: a review of functional traits to assess sensitivity and adaptive capacity of temperate and boreal trees to climate change (2016, background): “Also, soil depth of buds and rhizomes in relation to fire severity is likely to be more critical than maximum rooting depth (Pausas et al. 2004; Clarke et al. 2013).”
Phylogenetic signatures of facilitation and competition in successional communities (2009, background): “In general, short fire-return intervals may exhaust buds and the reserves of resprouters, and thus eliminate them, whereas low fire frequencymay cause seeder populations to decline over time (Lloret, Pausas & Vilà 2003; Pausas et al. 2004).”
Fire management for biodiversity conservation: Key research questions and our capacity to answer them (2010, background): “To date, the most valuable predictions using functional groups arise from higher plants, where functional groups can be formed based on detailed, species-level information (Bradstock and Kenny, 2003; Keith et al., 2007; Pausas et al., 2004).”
Plant functional types: are we getting any closer to the Holy Grail? (2007, background): “Pausas et al. (2004) analysed regeneration strategies worldwide for woody plant species from ecosystems that are subject to stand-replacement (crown) fires.”
Wildfire promotes broadleaves and species mixture in boreal forest (2009, positive): “, 1997; Gutsell and Johnson, 2002) and the competitive ability to colonize a burn differ drastically among early- and latesuccession species (Thomas and Wein, 1985; Whittie et al., 1997; Pausas et al., 2004).”
Nutrient availability induces contrasting allocation and starch formation in resprouting and obligate seeding shrubs (2005, background): “A functional trait that is being increasingly recognized is the ability of woody plants to resprout after disturbance (Bellingham & Sparrow 2000; Pausas et al . 2004 ), giving rise to the concept of a persistence niche in plant communities (Bond & Midgley 2001).”
Inferring differential evolutionary processes of plant persistence traits in Northern Hemisphere Mediterranean fire‐prone ecosystems (2006, background): “This trend may also occur within a region, and could explain the increased abundance of R+P+ species along a fire frequency gradient in Australian heathlands (Pausas et al. 2004).”
Fire as a Selective Agent for both Serotiny and Nonserotiny Over Space and Time (2020, background): “This might be exacerbated by their typically low annual seed set compared with nonsprouters (Lamont and Wiens, 2003; Pausas et al. , 2004).”
TRY – a global database of plant traits (2011, background): “…(even though in some cases they are more variable than studies suggest, e.g. flower colour or dispersal mode), and they are often used as covariates in analyses, as when comparing evergreen vs. deciduous (Wright et al., 2005) or resprouting vs. nonresprouting plants (Pausas et al., 2004).”
Simulating Mediterranean landscape pattern and vegetation dynamics under different fire regimes (2006, methodology): “Species attributes (Table 1) are obtained from field experience and from the literature (Lloret 1998; Pausas 1999a, b; Pausas et al. 1999, 2004c; Lloret et al. 2003; Pausas and Verdú 2005).”