Fire and life history affect the distribution of plant species in a biodiversity hotspot
Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
Aim: Species distribution models (SDMs) provide valuable insights into species–environment
relationships and potential climate change impacts on diversity. Most SDMs
do not account for the role of natural disturbance regimes such as fire in determining
current and future species distributions, or how species traits mediate their response
to these stressors. Here, we investigate the importance of fire in determining the
distributions of species in fire‐prone fynbos vegetation, and how this varies in relation
to different life history traits (growth form and fire‐response strategy).
Location: Cape Floristic Region, South Africa.
Methods: We modelled the distribution of 104 plant species with different life history
traits, using Maxent. The model included five climatic variables, one edaphic and
one fire variable. Post hoc analyses of model output and permutation procedures
were conducted to assess variable importance across different life history traits. We
accounted for phylogenetic autocorrelation using sister species comparisons.
Results: Permutation importance scores identified fire return interval as a major determinant
of fynbos species’ distributions. Linear mixed effect analyses revealed that
seeder species were significantly more sensitive to fire than resprouters. Coefficients
from the (linear) response curves of the different predictors indicated that the occurrence
of species across all life histories was negatively associated with longer fire
return intervals.
Main conclusions: Fire and life history traits governing species’ response to fire are
key factors determining species distributions in our study system. SDMs that ignore
the role of fire in driving species distributions, and how this varies across different life
history types, compromise our ability to understand species–environment relationships
in fire‐prone ecosystems. There is great need for better spatial data describing
historical, current and future fire regimes and for models that can incorporate different
responses based on species life histories, to improve vulnerability assessments
for fire‐prone ecosystems.
Description
CITATION: Magadzire, N., et al. 2019. Fire and life history affect the distribution of plant species in a biodiversity hotspot. Diversity and Distributions, 25(4):1-12, doi:10.1111/ddi.12921.
The original publication is available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The original publication is available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Keywords
Fynbos
Citation
Magadzire, N., et al. 2019. Fire and life history affect the distribution of plant species in a biodiversity hotspot. Diversity and Distributions, 25(4):1-12, doi:10.1111/ddi.12921