Journal
NEW PHYTOLOGIST
Volume 203, Issue 3, Pages 1000-1011Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/nph.12846
Keywords
fire; functional traits; grass community; historical biogeography; phylogeny
Categories
Funding
- NSF [DEB-0841917]
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- Society for the Study of Evolution
- American Philosophical Society
- Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies
- Yale Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1440484] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems [0841865] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0823341] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The importance of fire in the creation and maintenance of mesic grassland communities is well recognized. Improved understanding of how grasses - the dominant clade in these important ecosystems - will respond to alterations in fire regimes is needed in the face of anthropogenically driven climate and land-use change. Here, we examined how grass communities shift in response to experimentally manipulated fire regimes at multiple levels of community diversity - taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional - in C-4-dominanted mesic savanna grassland sites with similar structure and physiognomy, yet disparate biogeographic histories. We found that the grass communities were similar in their phylogenetic response and aspects of their functional response to high fire frequency. Both sites exhibited phylogenetic clustering of highly abundant species in annually burned plots, driven by species of the Andropogoneae, and a narrow range of functional strategies associated with rapid post-fire regeneration in a high-light, nitrogen-limited environment. By examining multiple facets of diversity in a comparative context, we identified convergent phylogenetic and functional responses to altered fire regimes in two mesic savanna grasslands. Our results highlight the importance of a common filtering process associated with fire that is consistent across grasslands of disparate biogeographic histories and taxonomic representation.
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