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Bamboo, fire and flood: regeneration of Bambusa arnhemica (Bambuseae: Poaceae) after mass-flowering and die-off at contrasting sites in monsoonal northern Australia

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-16, 19:44 authored by Franklin, DC, David BowmanDavid Bowman
Bambusa arnhemica F.Muell., a long-lived, gregarious-flowering and semelparous bamboo endemic to north-western Australia, occurs in remarkably disparate but somewhat fire-sheltered flood-prone riparian forest and rocky hillside vine-thickets, but not in adjacent fire-prone savannas. We investigated the response of B. arnhemica seedlings to fire and flood at two contrasting sites over 2.5 years following a mass-flowering and die-off event. Seedlings grew vigorously notwithstanding either prolonged inundation or total loss of above-ground parts to fire within their first year. However, there was no evidence that such disturbance promoted regeneration, and several veins of evidence suggest that B. arnhemica is fire-retardant and refugial rather than fire-promoting. We suggest that creation of canopy gaps by parental death is a more parsimonious and generalisable hypothesis for the evolution of gregarious semelparity in bamboos than the recently advanced bamboo fire-cycle hypothesis. However, both hypotheses are potentially group selectionist, and resolution of dispersal distances and/or the spatial genetics of relatedness are required to resolve the problem.

History

Publication title

Australian Journal of Botany

Volume

51

Issue

5

Pagination

529-542

ISSN

0067-1924

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

CSIRO

Place of publication

Victoria

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Social impacts of climate change and variability

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