Predicting faunal fire responses in heterogeneous landscapes: the role of habitat structure

• DOI: 10.1890/14-1533.1
• Publication Date: 2015-04-21T01:34:42Z
• Authors: Matthew Swan; Fiona Christie; Holly Sitters; Alan York; Julian Di Stefano
• Keywords: Fire regime; Biota; Fire ecology

Predicting the effects of fire on biota is important for biodiversity conservation in fire-prone landscapes. Time since often used to predict occurrence fauna, yet many species, it a surrogate variable and temporal change resource availability which animals actually respond. Therefore prediction fire-fauna relationships will be uncertain if time not strongly related resources. In this study, we space-for-time substitution across large diverse landscape investigate interrelationships between ground-dwelling mammals, fire, structural We predicted that much variation habitat structure would remain unexplained by species' better than fire. line with predictions, found was moderately correlated poor mammal occurrence. Variables representing were predictors all species considered. Our results suggest unlikely useful mammals heterogeneous Faunal landscapes benefit from combined understanding fauna-resource ways (including planned fires wildfires) alters spatial distribution faunal