Fire is a disturbance factor in ecosystems worldwide and affects the reproduction of many plant species. For some species, it is just one of several disturbances that trigger seed germination and subsequent seedling recruitment, whereas in other ‘fire-dependent’ species, fire may be required for seedling recruitment. Fire may trigger seed regeneration directly, through the opening of serotinous...

Fallen tree trunks (‘nurse logs’) are important recruitment sites for trees in temperate forest, however nurse log use is seldom reported in tropical forests. We predicted that logs should be important for the regeneration of small-seeded tropical pioneer species because surface leaf litter and competition with established vegetation reduces the establishment success of these species from soil ...

During early stand development, coniferous forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest commonly pass through a period of dense shade and intense competition during which the abundance and diversity of understory plants decline dramatically. In young, managed forests, silvicultural thinning has been proposed to enhance the structural and floristic diversity of the understory. Although germination o...

Seed size and shape, measured as the variance of the three main dimensions, have been proposed as good indicators for predicting seed persistence. We tested whether these variables were robust predictors of seed persistence in the soil for 58 abundant herbaceous species, primarily annuals, in grass and scrubland of central Spain. Seed persistence was estimated from data on germinable seed banks...

As pinyon–juniper (specifically, Pinus monophylla and Juniperus osteosperma) woodlands in the western United States increase in distribution and density, understory growth declines and the occurrence of crown fires increases, leaving mountainsides open to both soil erosion and invasion by exotic species. We examined if the loss in understory cover that occurred with increasing tree cover was re...

With globalisation facilitating the movement of plants and seeds beyond native range, preventing potentially harmful introductions requires knowledge what drives successful establishment spread alien plants. Here, we examined global-scale relationships between naturalisation success (incidence extent) invasiveness, soil seed bank properties (type densities) key species traits (seed mass, dorman...

The objectives of this study were to evaluate woody-species composition and seed density in the soil bank (SSB) a dry subtropical forest with different disturbance regimes assess role leaf litter as reservoir disturbed forests. Study area: western Argentine Chaco region. Climate is seasonal semiarid, fire season coincides cool periods. In first step, we evaluated species soils forests four comb...

Fire is a major ecological factor in many biomes of the world (Rundel 1981). In the Mediterranean ecosystems fire acts as an integral part of their evolutionary history, having shaped their adaptive traits (Naveh 1975). It is beyond any doubt that the specific characteristics of fire regimes have a profound effect on these ecosystems (Mooney and Conrad 1977), the most important of which is rela...