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Fitness and evolution of resprouters in relation to fire

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Abstract

There are many ways that plants may recover vegetatively from dieback caused by fires. Compared with fire-killed species, the presence of woody resprouters in fire-prone floras increases with fire frequency, though this is affected by site productivity that may have opposing correlates along different gradients. Population recovery is enhanced by resprouting when fecundity is low and/or seedling recruitment is not guaranteed. There is resource cycling between vegetative growth and storage but no clear trade-off between fecundity and storage, and more attention needs to be given to the role of somatic mutations in reducing fecundity. Seven fitness benefits of post-fire resprouting are noted that centre around the rapid return to adult growth rates and early flowering and seed set without the risks of recruitment failure. The extent of resprouting at the individual, population, and species levels varies greatly but it is under genetic control. Recent studies on the evolution of resprouting in fire-prone systems have shown that types of resprouting (clonality, rootstocks, epicormic bud strands) are derived from surrounding parent lineages lacking these traits and confined to non-fire-prone environments. The oldest lineages with fire-related resprouting date to at least 61 million years ago, indicating that seed plants have had a long evolutionary relationship with fire. Various genetic mechanisms, including beneficial somatic mutations, have been invoked to explain how speciation of resprouters may keep pace with non-sprouters.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the many years of support on the fire ecology of the Australian flora from the Australian Research Council, Department of Environment and Conservation (WA) and Curtin University. We thank the three referees for their comments and, in particular, the excellent reviewing by the guest editors, Mike Lawes and Peter Clarke.

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  1. Department of Environment and Agriculture, Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, WA, 6845, Australia

    Byron B. Lamont & Tianhua He

  2. School of Environmental Science, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA, 6150, Australia

    Byron B. Lamont & Neal J. Enright

  3. School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

    Tianhua He

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  1. Byron B. Lamont
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Correspondence to Neal J. Enright.

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11258_2011_9982_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Supplementary Fig. S1 Ancestral state reconstruction for resprouting in Banksiinae (84 Banksia + 5 Dryandra taxa, the latter at the top of the chronogram) and related taxa. * non-serotinous species, indicating that they do not rely on fire for seedling recruitment and are less fire-prone than the other species. Analysis adapted from He et al. (2011). (DOCX 630 kb)

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Lamont, B.B., Enright, N.J. & He, T. Fitness and evolution of resprouters in relation to fire. Plant Ecol 212, 1945–1957 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-011-9982-3

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