2023/08/01 by Juli G. Pausas, Jon E. Keeley · 1 voice · 3 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Fire effects on ecosystems #Plant Parasitism and Resistance #Plant and animal studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/biosci/biad059
openalex publication_date 2023/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract The idea that fire acts as an evolutionary force contributing to shaping species traits started a century ago, but had not been widely recognized until very recently. Among the first to realize this force were Edward B. Poulton, R. Dale Guthrie, and Edwin V. Komarek in animals and Willis L. Jepson, Walter W. Hough, Tom M. Harris, Philip V. Wells, and Robert W. Mutch in plants. They were all ahead of their time in their evolutionary thinking. Since then, evolutionary fire ecology has percolated very slowly into the mainstream ecology and evolutionary biology; in fact, this topic is still seldom mentioned in textbooks of ecology or evolution. Currently, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that we cannot understand the biodiversity of our planet without considering the key evolutionary role of fire. But there is still research to be done in order to fully understand fire's contribution to species evolution and to predicting species responses to rapid global changes.