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Journal of Ecology - 2026 - Gora - Lightning‐caused disturbance frequency and severity varies with topography in an971.44 kB
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Journal article
Lightning-caused disturbance frequency and severity varies with topography in an Afromontane forest
Journal of Ecology, Vol.114(3), pp.1-12
2026
Abstract
Lightning is an important agent of tropical tree mortality, but field data on lightning-caused disturbances is largely restricted to one lowland tropical forest in Panama.
Here we quantified variation in the frequency and severity of visually detectable lightning-caused disturbances across topography in the montane forests of Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda. This was the first systematic assessment of lightning-caused disturbance in any African tropical forest and a preliminary exploration of the association between lightning disturbance frequency and forest tolerance to lightning.
Lightning-caused disturbances were observed six times more frequently on ridges (19 strikes across 4.5 km of transects) than in valleys (2 strikes across 2.9 km), but lightning-caused disturbances in valleys tended to cause more tree-level damage than those on ridges (and also kill a higher proportion of the trees affected within each lightning disturbance, although the rarity of disturbances in valleys meant the latter effect was not statistically significant). Overall, lightning disturbances tended to kill a lower proportion of trees in this Afromontane forest than in previously documented lightning disturbances in tropical America.
We also observed less tree-level damage to ridge-dominant Syzygium spp. (Myrtaceae) compared to the community-wide average, providing support for taxonomic differences in lightning tolerance.
Synthesis. Our results indicate that lightning disturbance severity differs within and among sites, potentially mediated by differences in lightning tolerance among tree species and provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that disturbance severity declines with disturbance frequency.
Details
- Title
- Lightning-caused disturbance frequency and severity varies with topography in an Afromontane forest
- Authors
- Evan M. Gora - Smithsonian Tropical Research InstituteAlain Senghor K. Ngute - University of the Sunshine CoastRodrigue Batumike - Norwegian University of Life SciencesAida Cuni-Sanchez - Norwegian University of Life SciencesGerard Imani - Université Officielle de BukavuBeth A. Kaplin - University of RwandaDrew Bantlin - South African National ParksRobert Bitariho - Mbarara University of Science and TechnologyBianca Zoletto - Wageningen University & ResearchNikolaos Petridis - Wageningen University & ResearchDouglas Sheil - Mbarara University of Science and TechnologyMartin J. P. Sullivan (Corresponding Author) - Manchester Metropolitan University
- Publication details
- Journal of Ecology, Vol.114(3), pp.1-12
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
- Date published
- 2026
- DOI
- 10.1111/1365-2745.70278
- ISSN
- 1365-2745
- Copyright note
- © 2026 The Author(s). Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Data Availability
- Data are deposited at https://doi.org/10.5285/d47e78bc-2227-4bc7-90ae-9ec871c52bec (Sullivan et al., 2024).
- Grant note
- Natural Environment Research Council. Grant Number: NE/W003872/1
- Organisation Unit
- Forest Research Institute
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991216244502621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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