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The key host for an invasive forest pathogen also facilitates the pathogen's survival of wildfire in California forests
Author(s) -
Beh Maia M.,
Metz Margaret R.,
Frangioso Kerri M.,
Rizzo David M.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
new phytologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.742
H-Index - 244
eISSN - 1469-8137
pISSN - 0028-646X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2012.04352.x
Subject(s) - phytophthora ramorum , bay , vegetation (pathology) , host (biology) , biology , ecology , pathogen , geography , botany , medicine , archaeology , pathology , phytophthora , immunology
Summary The first wildfires in sudden oak death‐impacted forests occurred in 2008 in the Big Sur region of California, creating the rare opportunity to study the interaction between an invasive forest pathogen and a historically recurring disturbance. To determine whether and how the sudden oak death pathogen, P hytophthora ramorum , survived the wildfires, we completed intensive vegetation‐based surveys in forest plots that were known to be infested before the wildfires. We then used 24 plot‐based variables as predictors of P . ramorum recovery following the wildfires. The likelihood of recovering P . ramorum from burned plots was lower than in unburned plots both 1 and 2 yr following the fires. Post‐fire recovery of P. ramorum in burned plots was positively correlated with the number of pre‐fire symptomatic California bay laurel ( U mbellularia californica ), the key sporulating host for this pathogen, and negatively correlated with post‐fire bay laurel mortality levels. Patchy burn patterns that left green, P . ramorum ‐infected bay laurel amidst the charred landscape may have allowed these trees to serve as inoculum reservoirs that could lead to the infection of newly sprouting vegetation, further highlighting the importance of bay laurel in the sudden oak death disease cycle.