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Fire as a selective force in a Bornean tropical everwet forest

  • Conservation ecology - Original Paper
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Abstract

Tree species rarely exposed to burning, like in everwet tropical forests, are unlikely to be fire adapted. Therefore, one could hypothesize that these species are affected equally by burning and that tree abundance changes are linked solely to fire behavior. Alternatively, if species do react differentially to burning, abundance changes should be linked to tree habitat preference and morphology. Using tree inventories from old-growth and adjacent burned Bornean forest in combination with a database on tree morphology and habitat preference, we test these alternative hypotheses by (1) determining whether species specific abundance changes after fire differ significantly from equal change, and (2) whether observed abundance changes are linked to species morphology and habitat preference. We found that of 196 species tested, 125 species showed an abundance change significantly different from that expected under our null model of equal change. These abundance changes were significantly linked to both tree morphology and habitat preference. Abundance declines were associated with slope or ridge preference, thin barks, and limited seed dormancy. Abundance increases were associated with high light preference, small adult stature, light wood, large leaves, small seeds and long seed dormancy. While species habitat preference and morphology explained observed abundance increases well, abundance declines were only weakly associated with them (R 2 ~ 0.09). This suggests that most tree mortality was random and everwet tropical tree species are poorly fire adapted. As fire frequencies are increasing in the everwet tropics, this might eventually result in permanently altered species compositions and even species extinctions.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Wanariset-Samboja herbarium staff for the accurate identification of the collected plant material. We also thank the motivated and enthusiastic local field crews from Samboja that helped us. We are grateful to the Tropenbos-Balikpapan Project for their logistical support. The Sungai Wain Management Body is thanked for granting us permission to work in the Sungai Wain area. We thank LIPI for providing us with the necessary research permits. This research was made possible thanks to financial support by the Dutch Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (NWO-WOTRO), Alberta Mennega Stichting and Treub Foundation. All experiments comply with the current laws of Indonesia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, 666303, Yunnan, China

    J. W. Ferry Slik & Charles H. Cannon

  2. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Tervuren, Belgium

    Floris C. Breman

  3. Nationaal Herbarium Nederland, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Caroline Bernard

  4. Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Centre for Ecosystem Studies, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Marloes van Beek

  5. Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Charles H. Cannon

  6. Eichhorn Ecologie, Zeist, The Netherlands

    Karl A. O. Eichhorn

  7. Wanariset-Samboja Herbarium, FORDA, km38, Samboja, East Kalimantan, Indonesia

    Kade Sidiyasa

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  1. J. W. Ferry Slik
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  2. Floris C. Breman
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  3. Caroline Bernard
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  6. Karl A. O. Eichhorn
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  7. Kade Sidiyasa
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Correspondence to J. W. Ferry Slik.

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Communicated by John Silander.

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Slik, J.W.F., Breman, F.C., Bernard, C. et al. Fire as a selective force in a Bornean tropical everwet forest. Oecologia 164, 841–849 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1764-4

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