The half century impact of fire on invertebrates in fire‐sensitive vegetation

Abstract

AbstractIn a world where fire is becoming more frequent and extensive, there is an opportunity and an obligation to understand the effects of burning on historically fire‐free ecosystems. The nature and duration of fire effects on invertebrate species and assemblages in these ecosystems are particularly poorly understood. We compared the invertebrate assemblages from plots burned 54 years prior to sampling with neighbouring ancient sub‐alpine coniferous and deciduous scrub on Mt Field, Tasmania, Australia. We tested the hypotheses that structural and floristic changes in the vegetation resulting from the fire influenced invertebrate assemblages and taxon distributions. We also tested whether capture through vacuuming was more effective in determining persistent differences resulting from fire than two aerial capture techniques. The legacies of fire on structure and flower availability affected the distributions of several invertebrate taxa. The taxon composition of invertebrate communities was most strongly differentiated between burned and unburned samples within the vacuum samples, with lesser effects from the aerial sampling techniques. Thus, the impact of fire on invertebrates persists for many decades, even when sampling areas are close to fire boundaries. The importance of preventing any burning of such fire‐sensitive vegetation is reinforced by the significant reduction of several associated invertebrate taxa.