Responses of resilience traits to gradients of temperature, rainfall and fire frequency in fire-prone, Australian forests: potential consequences of climate change

Abstract

The composition of plant communities may be driven by responses of key plant resilience traits (resprouting R+, non-resprouting R−, persistent P+ and transient P− seedbanks) to either resource competition or disturbance regimes. We explored responses of overall species richness and the richness of herbs and shrubs within the three most common functional types (i.e. facultative resprouters R+P+, obligate resprouters R+P−, obligate seeders R−P+) to orthogonal combinations of temperature (MAT), rainfall (MAP) and fire frequency (FF) in Dry Sclerophyll Forest in the Sydney basin (south-eastern Australia). R+ and P+ species were predominant (>72 % of total species). Overall richness was a signifi..