ArticleAmerican journal of botany2025
Toward a macroevolutionary understanding of live-leaf flammability in plant species of fire-prone forests.
Article in American journal of botany, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Toward a macroevolutionary understanding of live-leaf flammability in plant species of fire-prone forests.American journal of botany · 2025Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
premiseThe flammability of live leaves in canopies varies considerably among plant species. Identifying macroevolutionary processes that shape variation in leaf flammability contributes to an understanding of the phylogenetic underpinnings of wildfire dynamics.
methodsWe used a phylogenetic comparative approach to examine the macroevolution of live-leaf flammability in 75 plant species of fire-prone dry sclerophyll forests in eastern Australia. We estimated phylogenetic signal in leaf flammability, fitted a series of evolutionary models to test macroevolutionary hypotheses about leaf flammability, and assessed evolutionary correlations between leaf flammability and leaf water content (LWC), leaf mass per area (LMA), leaf area (LA), plant growth form, and fire response strategy.
resultsWe detected weak phylogenetic signal, indicating that leaf flammability exhibited greater variation among closely related species than would be expected under phylogenetic conservatism. The evolution of leaf flammability was equally well described by an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model and a Pagel's δ model, implying weak stabilizing selection and an acceleration in leaf flammability evolution over time. We found significant evolutionary correlations such that high leaf flammability was related to low LWC, low LMA, and large LA.
conclusionsOur results show that live-leaf flammability is an evolutionarily labile trait in plant species of fire-prone forests. We suggest that the evolution of the three leaf traits in response to prevailing environmental conditions (such as LWC to water availability, LA to light capture, and LMA to herbivore defence) provide antagonistic selective forces that produce a macroevolutionary pattern of weak stabilising selection on leaf flammability.
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