Fire ecology publication

With the first rains coming to Ngamiland these past few weeks and HOORC's Library garden full of the musical calls of African long tailed shrikes, the Okavango's dry season fires seem far in the past. Publication of Post-fire succession on savanna habitats in the Okavango Delta wetland, Botswana by Michael Heinl, Jan Sliva, HOORC researcher Mike Murray-Hudson and Budzanani Tacheba in a recent issue of the Journal of Tropical Ecology reminds us that fire is a natural part of the Delta's ecology. The researchers studied vegetation at 153 sites that had been without fire for two to three years to conclude that post-fire succession could be described as not only being driven by the life history of the species, but also by seedbank dynamics and plant mobility in early successional stages, and by competition and niche differentiation in late-successional stages. You can find the article in HOORC's Library.