Plant resprouting: How many sprouts and how deep? Flexible modelling of multi-species experimental disturbances

Abstract

Plants can respond to damage through regrowth from meristematic tissue, commonly concentrated in buds. Knowledge of the distribution and abundance of buds within plants can assist in understanding individual, population and species responses to disturbances. Yet belowground buds can be hard to study, as they may be cryptic until initiated in response to damage. Sprouts emerging following disturbance can be studied more easily and represent a realised bud bank. Here we aimed to characterise and compare the vertical distribution of sprouts from a previous study of clip and burn treatments for 42 species of grasses, forbs, subshrubs and woody plants in semiarid eastern Australia (Vesk et al., O..