Format: ORAL

Jaime Saiz-Blanco1, Conchita Alonso2, Carlos M. Herrera2, Juli G. Pausas1

1. Centro de Investigaciones sobre Desertificación, CSIC, Valencia, Spain 2. Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Seville, Spain

Although the ecological and evolutionary effects of wildfires on plants have been widely studied, thus far no attention has been given to the possible effects of wildfires on within-individual plant variability. This kind of variability affects both plant phenotype and epigenotype, and its deeply connected to plant animal interactions and maternal effects. In resprouting species, we hypothesize that wildfires can alter within-plant variability at both levels, since this process might lead to architectural changes and temporal homogenization of plant development. We also hypothesize that the relationship between epigenotype and phenotype might change. To test these ideas, we studied a population of the Mediterranean shrub Anthyllis cytisoides (Fabaceae) that was partially affected by a recent wildfire in Valencia. We selected plants that were resprouting after the wildfire as well as plants that were not affected by it to study leaf, flower, fruit and fecundity traits as well as epigenetic traits (i.e. global cytosine methylation) at a within-individual level. By fitting mixed models to the data, we could see that most traits changed in within individual variance with postfire resprouting, although the sign of change was not always the same: weight related traits tended to be more homogenous within burned plants, while petal size and global cytosine methylation were more variable. In addition, the relationship between methylation level and petal size was not the same in burned and unburned plants. These results highlight the potential role of wildfires in shaping within individual variability of resprouting plants both at the phenotypic and epigenotypic levels and, thus in plant animal interactions and in maternal effects.