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Background

Flammability is a compound plant trait that can vary significantly across natural populations within species. Investigating intraspecific variation in flammability provides insights into the evolution of plant flammability and inform understanding of wildfire risk and behaviour in different habitats.

Methods

We measured four flammability variables, representing ignitibility (time to ignition), sustainability (total burning time), combustibility (maximum temperature during burning) and consumability (percentage of biomass consumed by fire) to assess the shoot-level flammability of Dracophyllum rosmarinifolium (G. Forst.) (Ericaceae), a polymorphic endemic species distributed throughout New Zealand. We examined the relationship between flammability components and a suite of climatic and geographic variables (elevation, latitude, mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual rainfall (MAR) of the sample locations, etc.).

Results

We measured shoot-level flammability components of 62 individuals across eight populations. Burning time, maximum temperature and burnt biomass were positively correlated with each other, while ignition score was independent of other flammability components. All flammability components varied significantly across the eight populations. The habitat conditions we considered were not related to any of the shoot-level flammability components of D. rosmarinifolium.

Conclusions

Intraspecific variation in flammability in D. rosmarinifolium may be a byproduct of selection on other functional traits, such as leaf size, shoot lipid content, indicating that plant flammability is an incidental result, rather than selected for, at least in ecosystems without fire as a selective force.


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Intraspecific variation in shoot flammability in Dracophyllum rosmarinifolium is not predicted by habitat environmental conditions

Show Author's information Xinglei Cuia,b( )Adrian M. PatersonaGeorge LW. PerrycSarah V. WysedMd Azharul AlamaCongde HuangbShixing ZhoubLin XiaobChanghong LaieFang HebDongyu CaobKate MarshallaTimothy J. Currana
Department of Pest-management and Conservation, Lincoln University, Lincoln, 7647, New Zealand
National Forestry and Grassland Administration Engineering Research Centre for Southwest Forest and Grassland Fire Ecological Prevention, College of Forestry, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130, China
School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand
Bio-Protection Research Centre, Lincoln University, Lincoln, 7647, New Zealand
Sichuan Province Forestry and Grassland Environmental Monitoring Centre, Chengdu, 610036, China

Abstract

Background

Flammability is a compound plant trait that can vary significantly across natural populations within species. Investigating intraspecific variation in flammability provides insights into the evolution of plant flammability and inform understanding of wildfire risk and behaviour in different habitats.

Methods

We measured four flammability variables, representing ignitibility (time to ignition), sustainability (total burning time), combustibility (maximum temperature during burning) and consumability (percentage of biomass consumed by fire) to assess the shoot-level flammability of Dracophyllum rosmarinifolium (G. Forst.) (Ericaceae), a polymorphic endemic species distributed throughout New Zealand. We examined the relationship between flammability components and a suite of climatic and geographic variables (elevation, latitude, mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual rainfall (MAR) of the sample locations, etc.).

Results

We measured shoot-level flammability components of 62 individuals across eight populations. Burning time, maximum temperature and burnt biomass were positively correlated with each other, while ignition score was independent of other flammability components. All flammability components varied significantly across the eight populations. The habitat conditions we considered were not related to any of the shoot-level flammability components of D. rosmarinifolium.

Conclusions

Intraspecific variation in flammability in D. rosmarinifolium may be a byproduct of selection on other functional traits, such as leaf size, shoot lipid content, indicating that plant flammability is an incidental result, rather than selected for, at least in ecosystems without fire as a selective force.

Keywords: Fire, Habitat, Dracophyllum, Flammability

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Published: 01 March 2022
Issue date: April 2022

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© 2022 Beijing Forestry University.

Acknowledgements

We want to thank the staff at the Allan Herbarium (CHR) for access to their collection of Dracophyllum species and site information on where to collect D. rosmarinifolium. We also want to thank the staff of the Department of Conservation of New Zealand, Myles Mackintosh and Eva van den Berg for the help in the sample collection. The collection of samples was authorized by the New Zealand Department of Conservation under collection authorization 65543-FLO.

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This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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