Functional diversity in an Andean subpáramo affected by wildfire in Colombia

Abstract

Recently, the Andean subpáramo in Colombia has experienced severe wildfires, but little is known about the functional composition of recovering or not after a wildfire. Therefore, we examined the functional community composition subpáramo affected by fire in 2016. We documented how functional traits changed 31 months after the disturbance and compared them with an unburned site. We sampled from one to two years after the fire every four months, then registered all recruits in 16 5 × 5m plots. New individuals were classified into strategy functional groups based on the traits of persistence and dispersal. The first group was stem type and regeneration mechanism (seedling and resprout), and the second was fruit type and dispersal mode. We investigated the degree to which functional diversity changes plant communities over time (woody and non-woody), and we compared it with an unburned site. The most relevant results showed that resprouts and seed regenerated increased post-fire time and significant differences between sampling periods. The anemochory is the most relevant dispersal mode that indicates the community capacity to colonize the new gaps opened by the fire rapidly. We discuss how wildfire appears to be a triggering factor for persistence and dispersal strategy groups in subpáramo burned given their characteristics of tolerance to stress. For this reason, a greater functional divergence between the ecosystems studied post-fire recovery has been related to higher levels of biodiversity at the landscape scale due to the high degree of endemism and significant differences in species composition between páramos.