Resumen de El pino canario: un superviviente entre volcanes

Unai López de Heredia, Rosana López Rodríguez, Carmen Collada Collada, Pilar Pita Andreu, Álvaro Soto de Viana, Luis Gil Sánchez, José Carlos Miranda, Víctor Chano

• The Canary Island pine Pinus canariensis is the main forest species of the western Canary Islands. The species occupies a wide range of elevations and climates in sharply different habitats, and it is able to withstand devastating perturbations, such as forest fires or volcanic activity. The remarkable ecological amplitude of the Canary Island pine is related to a series of structural and functional adaptations whose combination makes this species unique among conifers: re-sprouting and healing ability after fire or injury, a colonizing character of bare soils produced after volcanic eruptions by means of high seed dispersal ability, presence of serotinous cones, adaptations to drought, etc. Many of these adaptations occur locally in specific populations, and have been acquired along the long evolutionary periods when the species was subjected to an extremely unstable volcanic environment. Physiological and genetic approaches provide deep knowledge of the biological basis that govern these adaptations, which is needed to ensure the conservation of the species in areas potentially subjected to recurrent forest fires or volcanism.