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Groundcover Community Assembly In High-Diversity Pine Savannas: Seed Arrival And Fire-Generated Environmental Filtering, Kyle E. Harms, Paul R. Gagnon, Heather A. Passmore, Jonathan A. Myers, William J. Platt

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Environmental filtering—abiotic and biotic constraints on the demographic performance of individual organisms—is a widespread mechanism of selection in communities. A given individual is “filtered out” (i.e., selectively removed) when environmental conditions or disturbances like fires preclude its survival and reproduction. Although interactions between these filters and dispersal from the regional species pool are thought to determine much about species composition locally, there have been relatively few studies of dispersal × filtering interactions in species-rich communities and fewer still where fire is also a primary selective agent. We experimentally manipulated dispersal and filtering by fire (pre-fire fuel loads and post-fire ash) …