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Soil shapes community structure through fire

  • Community ecology - Original Paper
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Abstract

Recurrent wildfires constitute a major selecting force in shaping the structure of plant communities. At the regional scale, fire favours phenotypic and phylogenetic clustering in Mediterranean woody plant communities. Nevertheless, the incidence of fire within a fire-prone region may present strong variations at the local, landscape scale. This study tests the prediction that woody communities on acid, nutrient-poor soils should exhibit more pronounced phenotypic and phylogenetic clustering patterns than woody communities on fertile soils, as a consequence of their higher flammability and, hence, presumably higher propensity to recurrent fire. Results confirm the predictions and show that habitat filtering driven by fire may be detected even in local communities from an already fire-filtered regional flora. They also provide a new perspective from which to consider a preponderant role of fire as a key evolutionary force in acid, infertile Mediterranean heathlands.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by projects VAMPIRO (CGL2008-05289-C02-01/BOS) and PERSIST (CGL2006-07126/BOS), financed by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and project P07-RNM-02869, financed by the Junta de Andalucía regional government (Spain). Fieldwork was carried out under permission and complied with legal requirements of the Andalusian regional government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biología, Universidad de Cádiz, Campus Río San Pedro, 11510, Puerto Real, Spain

    Fernando Ojeda

  2. Centro de Investigaciones Sobre Desertificación (CIDE, CSIC-UV-GV), Apartado Oficial, 46470, Albal, Valencia, Spain

    Juli G. Pausas & Miguel Verdú

Authors
  1. Fernando Ojeda
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  2. Juli G. Pausas
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  3. Miguel Verdú
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Correspondence to Fernando Ojeda.

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Communicated by Jon Keeley.

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Ojeda, F., Pausas, J.G. & Verdú, M. Soil shapes community structure through fire. Oecologia 163, 729–735 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-009-1550-3

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