The diversity of post-fire regeneration strategies in the cerrado ground layer

1. Disentangling species strategies that confer resilience to natural disturbances is key to conserving and restoring savanna ecosystems. Fire is a recurrent disturbance in savannas, and savanna vegetation is highly adapted to, and often dependent on fire. However, although the woody component of tropical savannas is well studied, we still do not understand how ground-layer plant communities respond to fire, limiting conservation and management actions.

2. We investigated the effects of prescribed fire on community structure and composition, and evaluated which traits are involved in plant community regeneration after fire in the cerrado ground layer. We assessed traits related to species persistence and colonization capacity after fire, including resprouter type, underground structure, fire-induced flowering, regeneration strategy and growth form. We searched for functional groups related to response to fire, to shed light on the main strategies of post-fire recovery among species i...