Abstract
Reptiles in urban remnants are threatened with extinction by increased fire frequency, habitat fragmentation caused by urban development, and competition and predation from exotic species. Understanding how urban reptiles respond to and recover from such disturbances is key to their conservation. We monitored the recovery of an urban reptile community for five years following a summer wildfire at Kings Park in Perth, Western Australia, using pitfall trapping at five burnt and five unburnt sites. The reptile community recovered rapidly following the fire. Unburnt sites initially had higher species richness and total abundance, but burnt sites rapidly converged, recording a similar total abundance to unburnt areas within two years, and a similar richness within three years. The leaf-litter inhabiting skink Hemiergis quadrilineata was strongly associated with longer unburnt sites and may be responding to the loss of leaf litter following the fire. Six rarely-captured species were also strongly associated with unburnt areas and were rarely or never recorded at burnt sites, whereas two other rarely-captured species were associated with burnt sites. We also found that one lizard species, Ctenotus fallens, had a smaller average body length in burnt sites compared to unburnt sites for four out of the five years of monitoring. Our study indicates that fire management that homogenises large areas of habitat through frequent burning may threaten some species due to their preference for longer unburnt habitat. Careful management of fire may be needed to maximise habitat suitability within the urban landscape.
Highlights
Urban residential areas are growing at an increasing rate globally and it is estimated that by 2030 urban land cover will increase by more than 1.2 million km2 [1]
Urbanisation leads to large changes in the composition of native plant and animal communities [3,4] and global estimates have found that urban areas retain on average only 8% of their original bird fauna and 25% of their plant species in remnant native vegetation patches [5]
We calculated abundance as the number of unique individuals of each species caught at each site. We tested those species for which at least 30 animals were captured across the entire study (i.e. Ctenotus fallens, Hemiergis quadrilineata, Pogona minor, Cryptoblepharus buchananii, Lerista elegans, Lerista praepedita and Morethia obscura)
Summary
Urban residential areas are growing at an increasing rate globally and it is estimated that by 2030 urban land cover will increase by more than 1.2 million km2 [1]. Urbanisation leads to large changes in the composition of native plant and animal communities [3,4] and global estimates have found that urban areas retain on average only 8% of their original bird fauna and 25% of their plant species in remnant native vegetation patches (urban remnants) [5]. Urban bushland remnants in Perth support diverse reptile communities, with areas as small as a single hectare able to maintain viable populations of some species [32,33]. These remnants are vitally important habitats for reptile assemblages on the surrounding Swan Coastal Plain, in the face of rapid urban expansion [32,33]. We sought to examine how reptile species richness, abundance, body size and community composition differed between burnt and unburnt sites over a period of five years post-fire
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