Nathan L. Stephenson

May 14, 2024 | pubs.usgs.gov | Nathan L. Stephenson |Anthony C. Caprio |Adrian J. Das |Eva Lopez |Eva López

Many forests globally are experiencing increases in large, high-severity wildfires, often with increasingly inadequate post-fire tree regeneration. To identify areas that might need post-fire planting, forest managers have a growing need for seedling reference densities – the natural seedling densities expected to be adequate to regenerate a forest – to compare with observed post-fire seedling densities.

Jun 29, 2023 | nature.com | Tong Qiu |Marie-Claire Aravena |Yves Bergeron |Michal Bogdziewicz |Thomas Boivin |Thomas Caignard | +44 more

AbstractThe benefits of masting (volatile, quasi-synchronous seed production at lagged intervals) include satiation of seed predators, but these benefits come with a cost to mutualist pollen and seed dispersers. If the evolution of masting represents a balance between these benefits and costs, we expect mast avoidance in species that are heavily reliant on mutualist dispersers.