In tropical grasslands both fire and herbivory are frequent disturbances, and although they both remove above-ground biomass, they select for very different plant growth forms and life histories. Fire and herbivore functional traits are generally considered separately but there are advances made in understanding fire which relate to herbivory, and vice versa. Here we discuss how flammability and fire tolerance, palatability and grazing tolerance traits organise themselves in ecosystems exposed to these consumers, and how these traits might have evolved with reference to other strong selective processes like aridity. We present leaf-level data on flammability and palatability to identify trade-offs in how these functional attributes affect fire and herbivory in grassland communities, and we quantify how stomatal control as a drought response strategy affects community-level flammability. Our framework can be used to predict both the diversity of life history strategies and plant species diversity under different consumer regimes. Grasslands are important for the livelihoods and economies of many developing countries, and we show here that integrating taxonomic, phylogenetic, and ecological insights can improve grassland management and our ability to predict the complex interactions between drought, grazing, and fire.
