Abstract
AbstractAcross plant communities worldwide, fire regimes reflect a combination of climatic factors and plant characteristics. To shed new light on the complex relationships between plant characteristics and fire regimes, we developed a new conceptual mechanistic model that includes plant competition, stochastic fires, and fire-vegetation feedback. Considering a single standing plant functional type, we observed that highly flammable and slowly colonizing plants can persist only when they have a strong fire response, while fast colonizing and less flammable plants can display a larger range of fire responses. At the community level, the fire response of the strongest competitor determines the existence of alternative ecological states (i.e., different plant communities) under the same environmental conditions. Specifically, when the strongest competitor had a very strong fire response, such as in Mediterranean forests, only one ecological state could be achieved. Conversely, when the strongest competitor was poorly fire adapted, alternative ecological states emerged-for example, between tropical humid savannas and forests or between different types of boreal forests. These findings underline the importance of including the plant fire response when modeling fire ecosystems, for example, to predict the vegetation response to invasive species or to climate change.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record, shown for indexing and research. Copyright remains with the authors or the publisher. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 6
Claim · model-written summary
Highly flammable and slowly colonizing plants persist only with a strong fire response.
- Taxon
- plantsViridiplantaee0
- Outcome
- can persist only when they have a strong fire responsee0
- Qualifier
- highly flammable and slowly colonizinge0
Verbatim
e0“highly flammable and slowly colonizing plants can persist only when they have a strong fire response”
Claim · model-written summary
Fast colonizing and less flammable plants can have a wider range of fire responses.
- Taxon
- plantsViridiplantaee0
- Outcome
- a larger range of fire responsese0
- Qualifier
- fast colonizing and less flammablee0
Verbatim
e0“fast colonizing and less flammable plants can display a larger range of fire responses”
Claim · model-written summary
The strongest competitor’s fire response determines whether alternative ecological states exist under the same environmental conditions.
Verbatim
e0“the fire response of the strongest competitor determines the existence of alternative ecological states (i.e., different plant communities) under the same environmental conditions”
Claim · model-written summary
A very strong fire response in the strongest competitor produced one ecological state.
Verbatim
e0“when the strongest competitor had a very strong fire response, such as in Mediterranean forests, only one ecological state could be achieved”
Claim · model-written summary
Poor fire adaptation in the strongest competitor produced alternative ecological states.
Verbatim
e0“when the strongest competitor was poorly fire adapted, alternative ecological states emerged-for example, between tropical humid savannas and forests or between different types of boreal forests”
Claim · model-written summary
The authors recommend including plant fire response in fire ecosystem models.
Verbatim
e0“importance of including the plant fire response when modeling fire ecosystems”