Simulating Groundcover Community Assembly in a Frequently Burned Ecosystem Using a Simple Neutral Model

Fire is a global keystone process that drives patterns of biodiversity globally. In frequently burned fire-dependent ecosystems, surface fire regimes allow for the coexistence of high plant diversity at fine-scales even where soils are uniform. The mechanisms on how fire impacts groundcover community dynamics are however, poorly understood. Because fire can act as a stochastic agent of mortality, we hypothesized that a neutral mechanism might be...