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Disturbance maintains alternative biome states
Author(s) -
Dantas Vinícius de L.,
Hirota Marina,
Oliveira Rafael S.,
Pausas Juli G.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/ele.12537
Subject(s) - biome , ecology , vegetation (pathology) , disturbance (geology) , alternative stable state , range (aeronautics) , niche , geography , resource (disambiguation) , deforestation (computer science) , environmental science , ecosystem , biology , medicine , paleontology , computer network , materials science , pathology , computer science , composite material , programming language
Understanding the mechanisms controlling the distribution of biomes remains a challenge. Although tropical biome distribution has traditionally been explained by climate and soil, contrasting vegetation types often occur as mosaics with sharp boundaries under very similar environmental conditions. While evidence suggests that these biomes are alternative states, empirical broad‐scale support to this hypothesis is still lacking. Using community‐level field data and a novel resource‐niche overlap approach, we show that, for a wide range of environmental conditions, fire feedbacks maintain savannas and forests as alternative biome states in both the Neotropics and the Afrotropics. In addition, wooded grasslands and savannas occurred as alternative grassy states in the Afrotropics, depending on the relative importance of fire and herbivory feedbacks. These results are consistent with landscape scale evidence and suggest that disturbance is a general factor driving and maintaining alternative biome states and vegetation mosaics in the tropics.