Abstract
Our understanding of the impacts of time since fire on reptiles remains limited, partly because there are relatively few locations where long‐term, spatially explicit fire histories are available. Such information is important given the large proportion of some landscapes that are managed with frequent prescribed fire to meet fuel management objectives. We conducted a space‐for‐time study across a landscape in southeastern Australia where the known fire history spanned 6 months to at least 96 years. Four methods were used to survey reptiles in 81 forest and woodland sites to investigate how time since fire (TSF), habitat, and environmental variables affect reptile richness, abundance, and composition. We used generalized linear models, generalized linear mixed‐effects models, PERMANOVA, and SIMPER to identify relationships between the reptile assemblage (richness, abundance, and composition, respectively) and TSF, habitat, and environmental variables. All three reptile metrics were associated with TSF. Reptile richness and abundance were significantly higher in sites >96 years postfire than younger fire ages (0.5–12 years). Reptile composition at long‐unburned sites was dissimilar to sites burned more recently but was similar between sites burned 0.5–2 and 6–12 years prior to sampling. Synthesis and applications. Long‐unburned forests and woodlands were disproportionately more important for reptile richness and abundance than areas burned 6 months to 12 years prior to sampling. This is important given that long‐unburned areas represent <8% of our study area. Our results therefore suggest that reptiles would benefit from protecting remaining long‐unburned areas from fire and transitioning a greater proportion of the study area to long‐unburned. However, some compositional differences between the long‐unburned sites and sites 0.5–12 years postfire indicate that maintaining a diversity in fire ages is important for conserving reptile diversity.
Highlights
Prescribed burning is the most widely used management tool for reducing fuel in fire‐prone regions around the world (Fernandes & Botelho, 2003) and is increasingly applied for ecological purposes (Penman et al, 2011)
It stands to reason that as habitat and interactions change over time, reptile community composition should respond in some predictable sequence when preferred re‐ sources become available (the “habitat‐accommodation” model of succession (Fox, 1982; Caughley, 1985))
Our analysis using PERMANOVA indicated that dissimilarities in reptile composition between sites were most strongly asso‐ ciated with time since fire (TSF) (F = 4.87, df2,78, p = 0.001) and, to a lesser ex‐ tent, elevation (F = 3.67, df1,78, p = 0.001) and coarse woody debris (CWD) (F = 2.16, df1,78, p = 0.016)
Summary
Prescribed burning is the most widely used management tool for reducing fuel in fire‐prone regions around the world (Fernandes & Botelho, 2003) and is increasingly applied for ecological purposes (Penman et al, 2011). Shrubs and understorey may re‐establish as soon as 2 years after fire in some areas (Morrison et al, 1996) and remain at high density for at least four to five decades (Haslem et al, 2011) During this typ‐ ically shrubbier seral stage, reptile species that require open areas may decline (Ballinger & Watts, 1995; Pinto et al, 2006), sometimes to the point of localized extinction (Jaggi & Baur, 1999). The primary objective of this study was to determine how reptile richness and abundance vary in recently burned to very long‐unburned forests and woodlands, to ascertain the differences in reptile assemblages across the seral stages present, and to iden‐ tify habitat and environmental variables that may influence reptile communities
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