Abstract
Natural disturbances like droughts and fires are important determinants of wildlife community structure and are suggested to have important implications for prevalence of wildlife‐borne pathogens. After a major wildfire affecting >1,600 ha of boreal forest in Sweden in 2006, we took the rare opportunity to study the short‐term response (2007–2010 and 2015) of small mammal community structure, population dynamics, and prevalence of the Puumala orthohantavirus (PUUV) hosted by bank voles (Myodes glareolus). We performed snap‐trapping in permanent trapping plots in clear‐cuts (n = 3), unburnt reference forests (n = 7), and the fire area (n = 7) and surveyed vegetation and habitat structure. Small mammal species richness was low in all habitats (at maximum three species per trapping session), and the bank vole was the only small mammal species encountered in the fire area after the first postfire year. In autumns of years of peak rodent densities, the trapping index of bank voles was lowest in the fire area, and in two of three peak‐density years, it was highest in clear‐cuts. Age structure of bank voles varied among forest types with dominance of overwintered breeders in the fire area in the first postfire spring. PUUV infection probability in bank voles was positively related to vole age. Infection probability was highest in the fire area due to low habitat complexity in burnt forests, which possibly increased encounter rate among bank voles. Our results suggest that forest fires induce cascading effects, including fast recovery/recolonization of fire areas by generalists like bank voles, impoverished species richness of small mammals, and altered prevalence of a rodent‐borne zoonotic pathogen. Our pilot study suggests high human infection risk upon encountering a bank vole in the fire area, however, with even higher overall risk in unburnt forests due to their higher vole numbers.Open Research Badges This article has earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally‐shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at https://osf.io/6fsy3/.
Highlights
Natural disturbances like droughts and wildfires are often weather‐ induced and have shaped ecosystems and wildlife communities globally
The species richness of small mam‐ mals was low in all three forest types, and we only trapped few other small mammals than bank voles
We did not trap any field voles even though we know that this species was present at least in the non‐ studied part of the fire area, as revealed by three specimens speared on branches of pine trees by Great Grey Shrikes (Lanius excubitor Linnaeus) in 2011
Summary
Natural disturbances like droughts and wildfires are often weather‐ induced and have shaped ecosystems and wildlife communities globally. In the short‐ term, forest fires significantly reduce richness of helminths in the long‐tailed field mouse Apodemus sylvaticus Linnaeus, increase prevalence of monoxenous (life‐cycle restricted to a single host species) helminths but decrease prevalence of heteroxenous helminths (life‐cycle dependent on multiple host species; Torre, Arrizabalaga, Feliu, & Ribas, 2013) The latter response is likely caused by intermediate hosts being rare or absent in intensively burnt forests (Torre et al, 2013). Different grass species (e.g., Deschampsia flexuosa (L.) Trin.) are known for their fast recovering capacity after forest fires as long as burn depth does not destroy rhizomes (Schimmel & Granström, 1996) Insects such as weevils are strongly favored by forest fires (Johansson, Andersson, Hjältén, Dynesius, & Ecke, 2011), and since they are frequently found on the ground, forest fires are expected to favor insectivores and/or small mammals with a broad food niche. | 12461 patches, which should increase transmission risk and PUUV prevalence
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