Trees that live in fire-prone areas have evolved thick bark to protect themselves. This trait can be used as an indicator of how resilient a tree species is to increased fire risk under global warming.

Adam Pellegrini, now at Stanford University in California, and his colleagues combed the literature for data on the relative thickness of bark for 572 tree species, and categorized the habitat of each. Savannahs typically experience more frequent fires than do forests, and the team found that tree bark from such habitats was, on average, three times thicker than that from forests. An analysis of a global data set of fires revealed that the more often a tree's habitat burned, the thicker was its bark. Fire and precipitation patterns together explain half the variation in bark thickness between species.

Ecol. Lett. http://doi.org/bw3p (2017)