Data from: Interspecific variation in post-disturbance growth responses of a savanna tree community and its implications for escaping the fire trap

Vegetation states in savannas are highly sensitive to tree growth rates,
which determine whether individual trees can ‘escape’ periodic
disturbances. Resprouting trees have lopsided shoot:root ratios and are
often multi-stemmed, and these variables can modify post-disturbance
growth rates and therefore the probability of escape. To date, few studies
have systematically examined the implications of interspecific variation
in these factors for escape. We conducted a two-year field experiment in
lowveld savanna in South Africa and quantified post-disturbance growth
characteristics of topkilled trees among 16 species. We examined the
dependence of growth on pre-disturbance stem size across species, and the
relationship between growth rates and the tendency of trees to produce a
few large vs. many small resprouts following disturbance. We found that
resprout growth was strongly influenced by pre-disturbance size, but the
relationship did not vary among species. In contrast, our results showed
that fast-growing species tend to allocate resources towards a few
dominant stems, while slow-growing species allocated new biomass towards
many smaller stems. Tree species that produced a few large stems also
tended to produce individual stems that were tall and thin, further
suggesting that the “few large vs. many small” axis is linked to intrinsic
species attributes. These findings have implications for understanding how
interspecific variation in savanna tree communities may influence their
ability to escape disturbance traps.