Journal
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH
Volume 46, Issue 1, Pages 20-24Publisher
CANADIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING, NRC RESEARCH PRESS
DOI: 10.1139/cjfr-2015-0227
Keywords
masting; acorn production; resource allocation; fire; Quercus
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [DEB-0816691]
- Cedar Creek National Science Foundation Long Term Ecological Research (NSF LTER)
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1234162, 1256394] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Highly variable patterns of seed production (masting) have been hypothesized to be driven by internal dynamics of resource storage and depletion. This hypothesis predicts that if seed production is artificially reduced, then the availability of unused stored resources should result in subsequent enhancement of the seed crop. We tested this prediction in two oak species with contrasting patterns of annual seed production (highly variable and relatively constant) by means of controlled burns at various frequencies over a 17-year period. We found that controlled burns reduced acorn production by both species in the year of the burn. In the species with relatively constant productivity, acorn production returned to baseline levels in the year following a burn; however, in the species with highly variable productivity, acorn production significantly increased the year following a burn. These results support a key prediction of the stored resource hypothesis by means of a long-term experimental test in wild tree populations.
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