A model of geographical, environmental and regional variation in vegetation composition of pyrogenic grasslands of Florida

Carr, Susan C.; Robertson, Kevin; Platt, William; Peet, Robert K.

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02085.x

Cited by 31 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…Other potential sources of variation that may influence patterns of establishment include propagule abundance relative to soil fertility and variable seed predation, as well as local-scale neighborhood interactions among individual plants associated with the availability of recruitment sites. Thus, in fire-dependent longleaf pine communities, nuanced patterns in species assemblages are likely to develop over time due to multiple fire events and varying climatic conditions, and across landscapescale gradients of soil moisture and fertility (Peet 2006, Carr et al 2009.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Productivity and species richness in longleaf pine woodlands: resource‐disturbance influences across an edaphic gradient

Kirkman

Giencke

Taylor

et al. 2016

Ecology

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This study examines the complex feedback mechanisms that regulate a positive relationship between species richness and productivity in a longleaf pine-wiregrass woodland. Across a natural soil moisture gradient spanning wet-mesic to xeric conditions, two large scale manipulations over a 10-yr period were used to determine how limiting resources and fire regulate plant species diversity and productivity at multiple scales. A fully factorial experiment was used to examine productivity and species richness responses to N and water additions. A separate experiment examined standing crop and richness responses to N addition in the presence and absence of fire. Specifically, these manipulations addressed the following questions: (1) How do N and water addition influence annual aboveground net primary productivity of the midstory/overstory and ground cover? (2) How do species richness responses to resource manipulations vary with scale and among functional groups of ground cover species? (3) How does standing crop (including overstory, understory/midstory, and ground cover components) differ between frequently burned and fire excluded plots after a decade without fire? (4) What is the role of fire in regulating species richness responses to N addition? This long-term study across a soil moisture gradient provides empirical evidence that species richness and productivity in longleaf pine woodlands are strongly regulated by soil moisture. After a decade of treatment, there was an overall species richness decline with N addition, an increase in richness of some functional groups with irrigation, and a substantial decline in species richness with fire exclusion. Changes in species richness in response to treatments were scale-dependent, occurring primarily at small scales (≤10 m ). Further, with fire exclusion, standing crop of ground cover decreased with N addition and non-pine understory/midstory increased in wet-mesic sites. Non-pine understory/midstory standing crop increased in xeric sites with fire exclusion, but there was no influence of N addition. This study highlights the complexity of interactions among multiple limiting resources, frequent fire, and characteristics of dominant functional groups that link species richness and productivity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Productivity and species richness in longleaf pine woodlands: resource‐disturbance influences across an edaphic gradient

Kirkman

Giencke

Taylor

et al. 2016

Ecology

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“…Midwestern U.S. fens as small as 80 ha can have .500 species (Amon et al 2002). Freshwater coastal marshes in Louisiana average 8-12 species per m 2 (Mancera et al 2005), and transects of temperate to subtropical North American wetland vegetation that are hundreds to thousands of meters long commonly record 50-200 species (e.g., Laliberte et al 2007, Flinn et al 2008, Peirson and Evans 2008, Carr et al 2009). The high diversity of BCR relative to other fossil assemblages probably reflects unusual preservation of herbaceous as well as the few woody plants, rather than high diversity of the original flora compared with extant floras in similar habitats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gradients on the BCR landscape.-In living wetland vegetation, even small changes in topography often have a strong effect on floral composition (e.g., Carr et al 2009). The strong influence of topography on species composition reflects multiple edaphic characteristics that vary with site elevation: flood frequency, fire frequency, and a host of chemical attributes of soil including pH, oxygen, and nutrient availability (e.g., Schalles and Shure 1989, Svenning 2001, De Steven and Toner 2004, Bowles et al 2005, Dick and Gilliam 2007, Laliberte et al 2007.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Floral and environmental gradients on a Late Cretaceous landscape

Wing

Strömberg

Hickey

et al. 2012

Ecological Monographs

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Abstract. We describe an in situ fossil flora of Late Cretaceous age (;73 Ma [megaannum or million years]) from Big Cedar Ridge in central Wyoming, USA, which we sampled using a modified line-intercept method to quantify the relative abundances of 122 taxa at 100 sites across 4 km of exposed sedimentary deposits. We also measured three physical variables at each site: paleotopographic level, grain size, and total organic content. Paleoenvironmental conditions and paleofloral composition at Big Cedar Ridge covary strongly and are highly heterogeneous on small spatial scales. The reconstructed vegetation has some similarities with extant topogenous fens, but also important differences. Non-monocot angiosperms were abundant only on wet, mineral substrates that had been disturbed shortly before preservation, consistent with the weedy life histories that are inferred for their Early Cretaceous ancestors. Many non-monocot angiosperms grew in small, dispersed populations, consistent with the hypothesis that they were biotically pollinated. Overall, non-monocot angiosperm abundance was low compared with many modern wetlands. A single species of coryphoid palm was the dominant on moist, stable, moderately organic-rich sites, a pattern seen in some subtropical to tropical wetlands in the present day. Fern thickets at Big Cedar Ridge occupied highly organic, possibly low-nutrient substrates, and were dominated by Dipteridaceae, Gleicheniaceae, Schizaeaceae, and Matoniaceae. The overall high diversity and abundance of pteridophytes is unusual in the context of modern vegetation, regardless of climate zone, and probably represents a late occurrence of pteridophyte-dominated vegetation that was common earlier in the Mesozoic. Plant distributions at Big Cedar Ridge combine aspects of pre-angiosperm and modern vegetation in a way that suggests both niche conservatism and niche evolution on geological time scales.

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“…For example, unique species sets are found along natural gradients over which soil moisture, soil texture, or nutrient availability varies (e.g., Kirkman et al 2001, 2004b, Carr et al 2009). Our experiment focused on the very small scale of 1-m 2 plots with manipulations that were similarly focused.…”

Section: Landscape-level Heterogeneity Also Influences Groundcover Spmentioning

confidence: 99%

Groundcover community assembly in high‐diversity pine savannas: seed arrival and fire‐generated environmental filtering

et al. 2017

Self Cite

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2017. Groundcover community assembly in high-diversity pine savannas: seed arrival and fire-generated environmental filtering. Ecosphere 8(3):Abstract. Environmental filtering-abiotic and biotic constraints on the demographic performance of individual organisms-is a widespread mechanism of selection in communities. A given individual is "filtered out" (i.e., selectively removed) when environmental conditions or disturbances like fires preclude its survival and reproduction. Although interactions between these filters and dispersal from the regional species pool are thought to determine much about species composition locally, there have been relatively few studies of dispersal 9 filtering interactions in species-rich communities and fewer still where fire is also a primary selective agent. We experimentally manipulated dispersal and filtering by fire (pre-fire fuel loads and post-fire ash) in species-rich groundcover communities of the longleaf pine ecosystem. We tested four predictions: (1) That species richness would increase with biologically realistic dispersal (seed addition); (2) that the immediate effect of increased fuels in burned communities would be to decrease species richness, whereas the longer-term effects of increased fuels would be to open recruitment opportunities in the groundcover, increase species richness, and increase individual performance (growth) of immigrating species; (3) that adding ash would increase species richness; and (4) that increased dispersal would generate larger increases in species richness in plots with increased fuels compared to plots with decreased fuels. We found that dispersal interacted with complex fire-generated filtering during and after fires. Dispersal increased species richness more in burned communities with increased and decreased fuels compared to burned controls. Moreover, individuals of immigrating species generally grew to larger sizes in burned communities with increased fuels compared to burned controls. In contrast to dispersal and fuels, ash had no effect on species richness directly or in combination with other treatments. We conclude that filtering occurs both during fires and in the post-fire environment and that these influences interact with dispersal such that the consequences are only fully revealed when all are considered in combination. Our experiment highlights the importance of considering the dynamic interplay of dispersal and selection in the assembly of species-rich communities.

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A model of geographical, environmental and regional variation in vegetation composition of pyrogenic grasslands of Florida

Cited by 31 publications

References 53 publications

Productivity and species richness in longleaf pine woodlands: resource‐disturbance influences across an edaphic gradient

Productivity and species richness in longleaf pine woodlands: resource‐disturbance influences across an edaphic gradient

Floral and environmental gradients on a Late Cretaceous landscape

Groundcover community assembly in high‐diversity pine savannas: seed arrival and fire‐generated environmental filtering

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