Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Evans, Margaret E. K.
• Holsinger, Kent E.
• Menges, Eric S.

Titel

Modeling the effect of fire on the demography of Dicerandra frutescens ssp. frutescens (Lamiaceae), an endangered plant endemic to Florida scrub

Ist Teil von

• Population ecology, 2008, Vol.50 (1), p.53-62

Ort / Verlag

Tokyo: Springer-Verlag

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

Wiley Online Library - AutoHoldings Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Managing populations, either for conservation, harvesting, or control, requires a mechanistic or semi-mechanistic understanding of population dynamics. Here, we investigate how time-since-fire affects demographic transitions in an endangered plant, Dicerandra frutescens ssp. frutescens (Lamiaceae), which is specialized to gaps created by fire. We used a hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate transition probabilities (i.e., the elements of population projection matrices) as a function of time-since-fire and random effects, from 13 years of data on marked individuals in five populations. Using a standard Bayesian criterion to compare models, we find that death becomes increasingly probable and progression increasingly improbable with time-since-fire. The magnitude of some of the time-since-fire effects is substantial: death is 3–5 times more likely for flowering plants >6 years versus 3–6 years post-fire, 3-step progression is almost 7 times less likely, and large flowering plants are more than 6 times more likely to stop flowering. These insights inspire new hypotheses about the underlying cause of decline with time-since-fire, and how it can be managed. Our approach can be used by others who wish to model the effect of an exogenous factor on demography, while rigorously accounting for uncertainty and variability.