Abstract
Fire is a fundamental process in savannas and is widely used for management. Pyrodiversity, variation in local fire characteristics, has been proposed as a driver of biodiversity although empirical evidence is equivocal. Using a new measure of pyrodiversity (Hempson et al.), we undertook the first continent‐wide assessment of how pyrodiversity affects biodiversity in protected areas across African savannas. The influence of pyrodiversity on bird and mammal species richness varied with rainfall: strongest support for a positive effect occurred in wet savannas (> 650 mm/year), where species richness increased by 27% for mammals and 40% for birds in the most pyrodiverse regions. Range‐restricted birds were most increased by pyrodiversity, suggesting the diversity of fire regimes increases the availability of rare niches. Our findings are significant because they explain the conflicting results found in previous studies of savannas. We argue that managing savanna landscapes to increase pyrodiversity is especially important in wet savannas.
Highlights
Fire is a key disturbance that plays a major role in determining the distribution of ecosystems (Bond et al 2005; Bowman et al 2009)
All models showed significant unexplained spatial variation modelled by the spatial effect, the expected positive relationships were found between each richness measure and both Net primary productivity (NPP) and topographic variation (Supporting Information)
Pyrodiversity was strongly correlated with richness of all taxon groups in wet savanna in the mean effect models, but had much smaller and often only weakly supported effects in dry savanna (Table 1)
Summary
Fire is a key disturbance that plays a major role in determining the distribution of ecosystems (Bond et al 2005; Bowman et al 2009). Fire influences many ecological processes, including carbon storage (Williams et al 2004), climate feedbacks (Beerling & Osbourne 2006) and tree recruitment (Bond 2008). It is a important process underpinning the functioning of the tropical grassy biome (Parr et al 2014). Fires can be characterised by size, intensity, season and frequency of burning (Martin & Sapsis 1992) These attributes vary along gradients of primary productivity, human activity and vegetation, but geographical patterns exist that allow fire regimes to be classified globally (Archibald et al 2013). No two fires are alike, and the variability among fires within a region generates ‘pyrodiversity’ (Martin & Sapsis 1992), an often overlooked emergent property of a fire regime. Martin & Sapsis (1992) argued that ‘pyrodiversity begets biodiversity’ in recognition that spatial and temporal variation in the attributes of fires may enhance the diversity of ecological niches thereby enhancing diversity
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