Sunday, April 24, 2016

Arid Plant Fire Adaptation



Adaptation is the act by which beneficial, heritable traits evolve by natural selection and survivability utilizing the best biologically engineered solution to sustain and avoid an impact. It performs a particular function. A characteristic that is defined a trait as meeting the criteria of adaptation when it could be proven that it was engineered design, passed on to off-spring (heritability), increased the fitness (natural selection), and the trait evolved due to fire (phylogeny).

Buckbrush germination following fire.


For an example the fourwing saltbush (Atriplex canescans) is considered a plant of evolutionary plasticity, making it well suited for survival in early post-fire communities (USFS). This also makes it moderately fire resistant and is a selection for green firebreaks in some regions as it is a semi-evergreen and does not easily ignite.

Fourwing saltbush
Another example is a trait found in many plants like Buckbrush (Ceanothus cuneatus) that is adapted to chaparral fires and is considered a fire recruitment species. The high temperatures of fire are necessary to melt and crack the seed, which have a high germination rate (USDA, 2015).

Buckbrush

3 comments:

  1. Bobbie
    Great adaptation description. I'm always amazed at species such as buckbrush that seed is initiated and spread by fire as well as having a high germination rate. Species that have foliage that is nearly fire proof such as saltbush is amazing also.

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    1. Yes, I wasn't aware of the unique trait in the foliage. These two species and many other desert shrubs are in my local environment. currently, we are in our fifth consecutive year of drought and many of these species are compromised to a great extent. Needless to say, wildfires are a huge concern. I would think the impact of drought would weaken their fire resistant adaptations but still not sure. More investigating and reading is needed. Thanks for the response!

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  2. I had no idea that Buckbrush, or any brush/bush were serotinous. I only knew some species of tree had that ability, such as the Lodgepole pine or Sequoia.

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