Fire stimulates grass flowering in the Cerrado independent of season

Abstract

Fire regimes play an important role in the flowering of several plant species. Frequent fires may have a positive impact by reducing dormancy levels, while fire exclusion may lead to decreased flower abundance due to competition (Coates et al., 2006). Post-fire flowering is a fire-adaptive trait that has been primarily described for Mediterranean-climate vegetation (Lamont & Downes, 2011). However, it is present in several families in different flammable ecosystems, although mostly described among monocots, such as orchids and grasses (Lamont & Downes, 2011). Grasses are less studied in this regard and may have their flowering affected by fire (Monasterio & Sarmiento, 1976), although it is not clear how fire stimulates grass flowering and how interaction between fire season (wet-and dry-season fires) and history affect grass phenology.Post-fire flowering may occur through the direct effect of heat on

Fire stimulates seedling recruitment from the seed bank in the Cerrado

“…Tropical grassy biomes cover 20% of global ecosystems (Parr et al., 2014) and fire is the main disturbance maintaining their structure, function and diversity (Bond & Keeley, 2005; Bowman et al., 2009). In the Cerrado, plants present a set of fire‐related functional traits and strategies assuring their resilience capacity, such as resprouting from protected buds (Chiminazzo et al., 2021; Pilon et al., 2021; Zupo et al., 2021), stimulated seed germination by heat shock and smoke (Zirondi et al., 2019; Dairel & Fidelis, 2020a; Zupo et al., 2021) and enhanced post‐fire flowering (Pilon et al., 2018; Zirondi et al., 2021; Fidelis et al., 2022).…”