Editorial: Understanding ecosystem resilience through physiological and ecological responses to bushfires

Fire has shaped terrestrial ecosystems for millions of years, influencing the structure, composition, vegetation dynamics and biodiversity of plant communities (Bowman et al., 2009). Many ecosystems have evolved under fire regimes that vary in severity, seasonality, and frequency. In response, plant species have developed a range of physiological and life- history traits that enable persistence and recovery following fire. These include thick bark that protects living tissues from high temperatures, seeds whose dormancy is broken by the heat pulse or smoke generated during fire, and the capacity to resprout from protected buds or belowground organs after fire (e.g., Simpson et al., 2021; Lamont, 2022). For example, many perennial grasses rapidly regenerate from basal meristems after the aboveground biomass is consumed by fire.