Abstract
AbstractAmphibians are threatened globally and, with the increased emphasis on using prescribed fire as an important tool to manage ecosystems, it is essential to understand how amphibians respond when exposed to habitats managed by fire. Most studies have focused on survivorship and population-level effects; how survivors react to postburn landscapes has received less attention. Crawfish frogs (Lithobates areolatus Baird and Girard) are an obligate crayfish burrow-dwelling North American grassland species in steep decline. Individuals spend their nonbreeding season associated with a single crayfish-built burrow, which protects them from dangers, including fire. We compared activity patterns and behaviors of crawfish frogs occupying vegetated and postburned prairie grassland habitats. In total, 24 581 images representing six weeks of observations on eight crawfish frogs (four each in vegetated and postburn habitats) were analyzed. While the number of individuals followed was small, our dataset demonstrated interesting differences in activity patterns and behaviors. In particular, while frogs occupying postburn and vegetated habitats exhibited similar nocturnal behaviors, diurnal behaviors were different. In daylight, crawfish frogs in vegetated habitats spent more time on their feeding platform away from their burrow entrance, while frogs in postburn areas spent most of their time at or in their burrow entrance. Further, frogs in postburn areas first emerged later in the day than frogs in vegetated areas. We conclude that while crawfish frog adults occupying a postburn landscape exhibit different behaviors compared to animals in vegetation, prescribed burns have little effect on adult crawfish frog survivorship and few indirect effects on fitness.
Highlights
Amphibians can flee neither far nor fast when threatened
While little work has been done on the reactions of individual amphibians to fire, most herpetologists would agree that from among the four described responses, amphibians are most likely to exhibit an avoidance of smoke and fire, a variable response to the thermal properties of postfire blackened areas, and an attraction to postfire regrowth, due in part to invertebrates reacting to the presence of newly established vegetation
Crawfish frogs (Lithobates areolatus) are obligate crayfish burrow-dwelling North American anurans taxonomically positioned within the Nenirana subgenus of Hillis and Wilcox (2005)
Summary
With the increased emphasis in the United States on using prescribed fire as a essential tool to manage ecosystems as diverse as western forests, southeastern longleaf pine savannas, and midcontinental prairies, there has been an amplified effort to understand how amphibians respond when exposed to habitats managed by fire (Russell et al 1999, 2002; Bury et al 2002; Pilliod et al.2003; Schurburn and Fauth 2003; Chelgren et al 2011) Most of these studies have been conducted in forest ecosystems and have examined either population-level effects, including survivorship and recruitment (Mushinsky 1985, Papp and Papp 2000, Cummer and Painter 2007, Hossack and Corn 2007, Bagne and Purcell 2009), or community-level effects (Bennett et al 1980, Ford et al 1999, Cavitt 2000, Bury 2004, Perry et al 2009).
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