Adjacent Unburned Areas Research Articles

Effects of fire on the populations of ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in an equatorial Andean páramo

Man-made fires are frequent during the dry season in grasslands of the páramo ecosystem of equatorial Andes, at elevations above 3400 m above sea level. They have the short-term effect of biodiversity loss and soil erosion, and the medium to long-term impact of leaving more available niches, resulting in changes in the ecosystem structure. This study aimed to understand the effects of these fires on ground beetle populations. The study area was on Cerro Atacazo where 300 ha were burned in July 2017. Samplings were made in a burned area and an adjacent unburned area at ca. 4000 m above sea level, over 17 months using pitfall trapping. Nine ground beetle species were collected, seven of which were present in the burned and unburned areas. The variations observed over time in ground beetle abundance are more likely driven by climatic factors, such as precipitation, than by the effects of fire. The species assemblages were significantly different in the two areas and no increasing pattern of similarity was observed as time passed after the fire, suggesting that reversing the effects of the fire would take more than 17 months. The response to the disturbance induced by fire appeared to be species-specific, with a greater abundance of large-size species in the burned area. Conversely, the total absence of the smallsize genus Oxytrechus in the burned area points to this taxon as a good indicator of the undisturbed páramo environment.

Effects of prescribed fire on planted oak growth and survival in restored savannas

Most oak savannas in the Midwestern United States have been lost to agriculture and habitat degradation. Because of their rarity and high plant and animal diversity, savannas are often a target for restoration, which frequently relies on the direct planting of oak seedlings to establish the necessary canopy. Returning fire to the system is critical to the herbaceous component, but with planted seedlings, managers risk damaging or killing trees if burning is introduced too soon. We studied the growth and physiological responses of three oak species (Quercus alba, Quercus macrocarpa, and Quercus velutina) to prescribed fire to determine impacts on planted trees. This study utilized two restored oak savanna units that were planted in 1995 and 1998, each with burned and unburned areas. We tracked trees ranging from 0.9 to 29.8 cm in diameter at breast height (DBH) to determine the size threshold above which top kill is unlikely and documented differences in leaf structure and extension growth between the burned and unburned areas. There was no mortality observed. Moreover, no trees larger than 4 cm DBH were top killed by the fire. Fire responses in leaf mass per unit area and chlorophyll content were small and inconsistent across species. However, all oak species grew more in burned areas than trees in adjacent unburned areas. Therefore, the addition of low‐intensity prescribed fire to an oak savanna planting may increase the growth rate of planted trees with minimal risk of mortality once trees have reached sufficient size.

Using Prescribed Fire and Biosolids Applications as Grassland Management Tools: Do Wildlife Respond?

Prescribed burning is a management tool commonly used in forested ecosystems in the southeastern United States, but the influence of this method on grassland vegetation and wildlife in this geographic region is unknown. During 2009–2015, we conducted a study to determine if the application of prescribed burning and/or long-term biosolid applications alter plant communities and/or wildlife use of grassland areas at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, Havelock, NC. We monitored vegetation growth, measured plant community composition, and documented wildlife activity in four study plots for 3 years after the implementation of annual winter prescribed burns. Prescribed burning reduced the amount of litter, increased bare ground during spring, and altered the plant community composition relative to areas that were not burned. Overall, prescribed burning did not alter (F1,803 = 0.37, p = 0.54) bird use of the airfield grasslands, while the long-term application of biosolids resulted in higher (F1,803 = 17.61, p < 0.01) bird use. Few species-specific differences in avian use of prescribed burned and unburned grasslands were found. In contrast, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) use of areas that were burned in winter, as well as the adjacent unburned areas, was drastically reduced. Winter prescribed burning appeared to remove forage plants at the time of year deer would use them the most. Our findings suggest that prescribed burning and biosolid applications, used alone and in combination, might be viable grassland management tools for altering wildlife use of grassland areas, specifically white-tailed deer; however, similar research at additional locations should be conducted.

Impacts of fire suppression on above‐ground carbon stock and soil properties in Borana rangelands, southern Ethiopia

AbstractBackgroundFire is a natural disturbance that releases carbon back into the atmosphere. Pastoralists have used fire for many thousands of years for rangeland management. The use of fire in the Borana rangelands of southern Ethiopia was a common practice to improve the productivity of the rangelands. However, the use of fire as a tool to manage rangeland was prohibited by government policy in the early 1970s.MethodsIn this study, we assessed the long‐term impacts of fire suppression on aboveground carbon stocks of woody and herbaceous biomass, soil organic carbon stocks, and total nitrogen stocks at burned versus adjacent unburned areas in the Borana rangelands of southern Ethiopia. The investigation was conducted in two locations: Dikale and Sanke. The upland location was represented by Dikale, while the bottomland location was represented by Sanke. Each study site was replicated three times, with burned versus adjacent unburned areas representing each replicate. Soil samples were collected in three soil depths (0–5, 5–15, and 15–30 cm), while vegetation attributes were collected from 60 plots within three burned and three adjacent unburned sites in each landscape.ResultsThe soil organic carbon stock and pooled carbon stock between burned and unburned sites across the two landscapes showed minimal variation. The above‐ground carbon biomass accumulation for woody and herbaceous plants did not show any significant difference between burned and unburned sites both at the bottomland and upland areas. The total nitrogen contents recorded at uplands in burned sites were significantly (p < 0.05) higher than the total nitrogen stocks for the unburned adjacent sites.ConclusionsBurned areas accumulated relatively more carbon stocks in terms of herbaceous biomass (3.27 ± 0.43 Mg ha−1) than the adjacent unburned areas (0.98 ± 0.43 Mg ha−1). The results of the current study suggest that burning improved the carbon sequestration potential of herbaceous plants in arid savanna ecosystems.

Fire Severity Controls Successional Pathways in a Fire-Affected Spruce Forest in Eastern Fennoscandia

Tree stand dynamics, changes in the ground vegetation and soils, and species diversity of wood-decaying fungi were studied in pristine middle boreal spruce forests affected by a surface fire in the Vodlozersky National Park (Arkhangelsk Region, Russia) in 2011. In the third year after the fire, the burnt area was dominated by birch, which contributed an average of 72% to the total amount of major tree species regeneration. In sites affected by a high-severity fire, the ground vegetation cover did not exceed 40%, with Chamaenerion angustifolium (L.) Scop. and Marchantia polymorpha L. dominating in the first years after. By the tenth year, the diversity of the newly forming tree layer increased from 5 to 11 species and natural thinning of deciduous tree regeneration was already underway, although its amount was still over 100,000 plants per hectare throughout. By the end of the first post-fire decade, Picea abies (L.) H. Karst. and Pinus sylvestris L. accounted for 11% of the total regeneration. The occurrence and cover of pyrogenic species Chamaenerion angustifolium and Marchantia polymorpha declined sharply at this stage. Vegetation in sites affected by mid-severity fire was mostly regenerating through propagation of the survivor Avenella flexuosa (L.) Drejer, Vaccinium myrtillus L., V. vitis-idaea, etc. In the burnt area, the species diversity of wood-destroying fungi was reduced compared to the adjacent unburned areas, and it was the same in both heavily and moderately burnt areas. This is probably due to the fact that the downed deadwood in post-fire sites was trunks of the same age and in the same degree of decay whereas the total amount of downed deadwood in the control (unburnt forest) was lower but featuring all stages of decay and, furthermore, there were plenty of fungi-populated dead standing and weakened overmature trees.

Sensitivity of Multifrequency Polarimetric SAR Data to Postfire Permafrost Changes and Recovery Processes in Arctic Tundra

We used full-polarimetric L-band and P-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data collected from the recent NASA Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) airborne campaign and Sentinel-1 C-band dual-polarization data to understand the sensitivity of radar backscatter intensity and phase to fire-induced changes in the surface and subsurface soil processes in Arctic tundra underlain by permafrost. The 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire on the Alaska North Slope was used as a case study. At ~10-year postfire, we observed a strong increase (>~3–4 dB) in the low-frequency radar backscatter in severely burned areas during the thaw season, in contrast to limited (< ~0.5 dB) C-band backscatter differences (VV and VH) between burned and unburned areas. However, C-band winter backscatter is generally higher (>1 dB) in burned areas than the adjacent unburned areas. Polarimetric decomposition analysis indicated a general trend toward more random surface scattering, and strong increases in double-bounce scattering and volume scattering power at both P- and L-band in the burned areas. The ice-rich yedoma region shows the largest backscatter increases in burned areas and the highest correlation with burn severity and microtopography changes. The above backscatter changes are attributed to increasing surface roughness and microtopography due to ice-wedge degradation and thermokarst development and increasing subsurface scattering due to an overall drier and deeper active layer in burned areas. Among all frequencies, P-band shows consistently larger contrast in backscatter power and phase between burned and unburned areas, which makes it potentially more useful to study fire–permafrost interactions in the Arctic over decadal time scales.

Medium-Term Effects of Different Wildfire Severities on Soil Properties: a Case Study of Hengduan Mountains, southwestern China

A forest fire can affect most soil properties, lead to severe erosion responses, and sometimes even catastrophic consequence: post-fire debris flows. Five years after a forest fire occurred on June 1st, 2014, in the Ren’eyong basin located in the central part of the Hengduan Mountains, the burned area was still being affected by the post-fire debris flows and flash floods. Therefore, assessing the extent of soil properties recovery is very important for predicting the development impact of wildfire-induced geological hazards. We tested the selected soil properties: soil moisture content (SMC), dry density, total soil porosity, soil organic matter content (SOM), saturated hydraulic conductivity, soil sorptivity (S), and soil water repellency (SWR) by in situ and laboratory experiments at two depths: 0∼2 cm and 2∼5cm beneath the soil surface in the low severity (LS) fire, medium severity (MS) fire, high severity (HS) fire areas, and adjacent unburned areas (as a control, C), respectively. The water drop penetration time (WDPT) test results showed that the SWR disappeared. The ANOVA analysis results indicated that, for the topsoil (0∼2 cm), most of the selected soil properties had a significant variance except for the S; only SMC and SOM showed a significant change for the deeper soil. The LS fire had negligible effects on these soil parameters at both depths. However, for the topsoil, the MS and HS fire effects were significant for most of these soil properties. The MANOVA analysis and paired t-test results indicated that the fire severity effects on the soil properties were significant, and the variance of fire severity effects was not constant at both depths. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) further confirmed that the HS and MS fires had significant impacts on the soil properties, and the effects of the LS fire were negligible. These results demonstrated that the medium-term effects of the high and moderate severity wildfires on the selected soil properties of the topsoil were significant. The partially recovered soil properties forebode an intense slope erosion or even a further catastrophic consequence.

Differential landscape use by forest owls two years after a mixed‐severity wildfire

AbstractOwls are important avian predators in forested systems, but little is known about landscape use by most forest‐adapted owl species in environments impacted by mixed‐severity wildfire. To better understand species‐specific patterns of post‐wildfire landscape use within an owl guild, we used passive acoustic monitoring using autonomous recording units. The technology is effective for multi‐species surveys, especially if some species are rare, nocturnal, or difficult to detect by traditional means. In 2017, we surveyed the interior and adjacent unburned areas of a 10,700‐ha mixed‐severity wildfire that burned in 2015 in southwest Oregon. We used occupancy modeling to identify patterns of landscape use by five species of forest owls: barred owls (Strix varia), great horned owls (Bubo virginianus), western screech‐owls (Megascops kennicottii), northern pygmy‐owls (Glaucidium gnoma), and northern saw‐whet owls (Aegolius acadicus). Our results showed a positive relationship between increasing fire severity and probability of use by western screech‐owls and a similar but somewhat weaker relationship for northern pygmy‐owls. Barred owls were rarely detected in severely burned areas and their use decreased with increased fire severity. We observed generally low landscape use for great horned owls, which decreased with increased fire severity and at higher elevations. Thus, four out of the five species appeared to use recently burned forests at different levels, with only northern saw‐whet owls showing near‐complete avoidance of the burned area. These findings increase our understanding of the basic ecology of each species and highlight the varied use of burned areas within this community. These previously undocumented patterns of landscape use in burned landscapes should provide insights to managers and policymakers in the Pacific Northwest as climate shifts, and fires may increase in size, frequency, and severity.

High functional redundancy drives vegetation recovery in Campo rupestre affected by wildfires

High functional redundancy drives vegetation recovery in Campo rupestre affected by wildfires

Diversity of functional trade‐offs enhances survival after fire in Neotropical savanna species

AbstractQuestionsWhat are the trade‐offs and/or associated syndromes within and between fire‐associated traits? Does bud protection relate to bark properties and tree resprouting ability? Which traits will influence post‐fire tree survival (mortality rate and top‐kill) and tree recovery (canopy recovery and resprouting volume)? Do species with different leaf phenology have the same ecological strategies to survive and recover from fire?LocationTree community in a Neotropical savanna.MethodsFor each of the 24 most abundant species, we characterised the trade‐offs among bud protection, bark traits, mortality, canopy recovery and top‐kill, and resprouting strategies in both a burned and adjacent unburned area of Cerrado vegetation.ResultsSpecies with unprotected buds had a higher risk of dying, while high bud protection was associated to the ability to resprout from both the canopy and the base of the tree. We found three major trade‐offs defined by bark traits and plant properties. Cerrado woody species invest in either (a) high inner bark thickness and bark moisture, or (b) fast growth rate, height and bark density, or (c) thick outer bark and high wood density with high bud protection.ConclusionsCerrado species show different sets of fire‐related traits that seem to be important for both individual survival and community assembly. Here, we report these trade‐offs for Neotropical savannas, and our findings also shed light on how changes in fire regime may favour different groups of species, leading to changes in plant communities over time.

What five insects told us about how a native plant copes with real-world problems

What five insects told us about how a native plant copes with real-world problems

Study of the Effect of Burning on the Organic Matter, the Total N, the Total P and the Exchangeable K of the Soils along Northern-East District of Libya

Burning of the soils as a result of the burning of vegetation especially the forests are often due to human activities. Most zones which are affected with burning are arid and semi-arid regions. Libya is one of arid regions in the world because the annual rainfall does not exceed 650 mm per year except in a small area called Green mountain (Aljabal Alakhdar), which is receive an annual rainfall exceed than 400 mm. It is the only wet area in Libya, so it contains forest with plant diversity. This region (the area covered by this study), like any forest area in the Mediterranean region is exposed to encroachments such as burning parts of it to convert trees to charcoal or burning trees and turning them into agricultural land in other parts. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of burning on the organic matter, chemical macro nutrients: total nitrogen, total phosphorus and exchangeable potassium that following burning in two areas in the Green Mountain, with those exposed to burning compared to those in adjacent unburned areas in one seaboard (Ras alhelal) and one mountainous (Marawah) site. The results of this study indicated that the soils in both sites, regardless of burning or depth fall into the silt loam category texture and the main separated particle size was the silt with low clay contents, also the results indicated that, the fire was not enough to change this texture. In the light of the results obtained, it is clear that soils of both study sites are characterized by low organic matter content. In addition, the results indicate that the average percentage of the organic matter in all layers at the seaboard site was higher than its average percentage in the equivalent layers at the mountainous site. According to the findings obtained from this study, there has been a strong impact of fire on total N especially in the new burnt (mountainous) site, which agrees reasonably well with the degrees of soil organic matter of both burned study sites. The expected way that total N would be lost in these soils by fire is in volatilization and particulate transfer to the atmosphere during burning. The results of total P in soils showed that there was more total P in the upper soil layer in the old-burnt site (seaboard) than the new-burnt (mountainous) site at the same depth. It should be noticed from the data that the amount of total P in the seaboard site was high compared with its amount in the mountainous site. As well the results showed that, exchangeable potassium was very limited probably due to its absence in the parent material of the soils and almost all that there is being absorbed by plants. The results indicate that the highest quantities of the exchangeable potassium were in the uppermost layers in both study sites, were particularly high in the mountainous site compared with the seaboard site and were markedly affected by burning in the top layer of the soil.

Recovery of biological soil crust richness and cover 12–16 years after wildfires in Idaho, USA

Abstract. Changing fire regimes in western North America may impact biological soil crust (BSC) communities that influence many ecosystem functions, such as soil stability and C and N cycling. However, longer-term effects of wildfire on BSC abundance, species richness, functional groups, and ecosystem functions after wildfire (i.e., BSC resilience) are still poorly understood. We sampled BSC lichen and bryophyte communities at four sites in Idaho, USA, within foothill steppe communities that included wildfires from 12 to 16 years old. We established six plots outside each burn perimeter and compared them with six plots of varying severity within each fire perimeter at each site. BSC cover was most strongly negatively impacted by wildfire at sites that had well-developed BSC communities in adjacent unburned plots. BSC species richness was estimated to be 65 % greater in unburned plots compared with burned plots, and fire effects did not vary among sites. In contrast, there was no evidence that vascular plant functional groups or fire severity (as measured by satellite metrics differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR) or relativized differenced normalized burn ratio (RdNBR)) significantly affected longer-term BSC responses. Three large-statured BSC functional groups that may be important in controlling wind and water erosion (squamulose lichens, vagrant lichens, and tall turf mosses) exhibited a significant decrease in abundance in burned areas relative to adjacent unburned areas. The decreases in BSC cover and richness along with decreased abundance of several functional groups suggest that wildfire can negatively impact ecosystem function in these semiarid ecosystems for at least 1 to 2 decades. This is a concern given that increased fire frequency is predicted for the region due to exotic grass invasion and climate change.

Fire severity alters the distribution of pyrogenic carbon stocks across ecosystem pools in a Californian mixed‐conifer forest

AbstractPyrogenic carbon (PyC) is hypothesized to play an important role in the carbon (C) cycle due to its resistance to decomposition; however, much uncertainty still exists regarding the stocks of PyC that persist on‐site after the initial erosion in postfire forests. Therefore, understanding how fire characteristics influence PyC stocks is vital, particularly in the context of California forests for which an increase of high‐severity fires is predicted over the next decades. We measured forest C and persistent PyC stocks in areas burned by low‐to‐moderate and high‐severity fire, as well as in adjacent unburned areas in a California mixed‐conifer forest, 2 to 3 years after wildfire. We measured C and PyC stocks in the following compartments: standing trees, downed wood, forest floor, and mineral soil (0–5 cm), and we identified PyC using the weak nitric acid digestion method. We found that the total stock of PyC did not differ among fire severity classes (overall mean 248 ± 30 g C m−2); however, fire severity influenced the distribution of PyC in the individual compartments. Areas burned by high‐severity fire had 2.5 times more PyC stocked in the coarse woody debris (p &lt; 0.05), 3.3 times more PyC stocked in standing trees (p &lt; 0.05), and a lower PyC stock in the forest floor (−22%, p &lt; 0.05) compared to low‐to‐moderate fire severity areas. These results have important implications for the permanence time of PyC, which is putatively higher in standing trees and coarse woody debris compared to the forest floor, where it is susceptible to rapid losses through erosion.

Plant Community Factors Correlated with Wyoming Big Sagebrush Site Responses to Fire

Plant Community Factors Correlated with Wyoming Big Sagebrush Site Responses to Fire

Reproductive success of wind, generalist, and specialist pollinated plant species following wildfire in desert landscapes

Wildfire can drastically affect plant sexual reproductive success in plant–pollinator systems. We assessed plant reproductive success of wind, generalist and specialist pollinated plant species along paired unburned, burned-edge and burned-interior locations of large wildfires in the Mojave Desert. Flower production of wind and generalist pollinated plants was greater in burned landscapes than adjacent unburned areas, whereas specialist species responses were more neutral. Fruit production of generalist species was greater in burned landscapes than in unburned areas, whereas fruit production of wind- and specialist-pollinated species showed no difference in burned and unburned landscapes. Plants surviving in wildfire-disturbed landscapes did not show evidence of pollination failure, as measured by fruit set and seed:ovule ratios. Generalist- and specialist-plant species established in the interior of burned landscapes showed no difference in fruit production than plants established on burned edges suggesting that pollination services are conserved with increasing distance from fire boundaries in burned desert landscapes. Stimulation of plant reproduction in burned environments due to competition release may contribute to the maintenance of pollinator services and re-establishment of the native plant community in post-fire desert environments.

Tropical Peatland Burn Depth and Combustion Heterogeneity Assessed Using UAV Photogrammetry and Airborne LiDAR

We provide the first assessment of tropical peatland depth of burn (DoB) using structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, applied to imagery collected using a low-cost, low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system operated over a 5.2 ha tropical peatland in Jambi Province on Sumatra, Indonesia. Tropical peat soils are the result of thousands of years of dead biomass accumulation, and when burned are globally significant net sources of carbon emissions. The El Niño year of 2015 saw huge areas of Indonesia affected by tropical peatland fires, more so than any year since 1997. However, the Depth of Burn (DoB) of these 2015 fires has not been assessed, and indeed has only previously been assessed in few tropical peatland burns in Kalimantan. Therefore, DoB remains arguably the largest uncertainty when undertaking fire emissions calculations in these tropical peatland environments. We apply a SfM photogrammetric methodology to map this DoB metric, and also investigate combustion heterogeneity using orthomosaic photography collected using the UAV system. We supplement this information with pre-burn airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, reducing uncertainty by estimating pre-burn soil height more accurately than from interpolation of adjacent unburned areas alone. Our pre-and post-fire Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) show accuracies of 0.04 and 0.05 m (root-mean-square error, RMSE) respectively, compared to ground-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) surveys. Our final DoB map of a 5.2 ha degraded peat swamp forest area neighboring Berbak National Park (Sumatra, Indonesia) shows burn depths extending from close to zero to over 1 m, with a mean (±1σ) DoB of 0.23 ± 0.19 m. This lies well within the range found by the few other studies available (on Kalimantan; none are available on Sumatra). Our combustion heterogeneity analysis suggests the deepest burns, which extend to ~1.3 m, occur around tree roots. We use these DoB data within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) default equation for fire emissions to estimate mean carbon emissions as 134 ± 29 t·C∙ha−1 for this peatland fire, which is in an area that had not had a recorded fire previously. This is amongst the highest per unit area fuel consumption anywhere in the world for landscape fires. Our approach provides significant uncertainty reductions in such emissions calculations via the reduction in DoB uncertainty, and by using the UAV SfM approach this is accomplished at a fraction of the cost of airborne LiDAR—albeit over limited sized areas at present. Deploying this approach at locations across Indonesia, sampling a variety of fire-affected landscapes, would provide new and important DoB statistics for producing optimized carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions estimates from peatland fires.

Short-term low-severity spring grassland fire impacts on soil extractable elements and soil ratios in Lithuania

Short-term low-severity spring grassland fire impacts on soil extractable elements and soil ratios in Lithuania

Small Mammal Abundance in Mountain Big Sagebrush Communities after Fire and Vegetation Recovery

Abstract. Managing fire for the conservation of biodiversity is a widespread challenge. An important disturbance mechanism in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) communities, fire has well-known effects on vegetation structure but poorly described consequences for sagebrush wildlife communities. We estimated the abundance of small mammals in relation to fire history in mountain big sagebrush (A. t. ssp. vaseyana) communities by way of a chronosequence approach that included 3 wildfires and adjacent unburned areas. We compared patterns of mammal community succession with expectations of the habitat accommodation model by associating responses of mammals to change over time in vegetation structure. Burned study sites were at various stages of vegetation succession from 7 to 19 years following fire. Shrub canopy cover ranged from 9% to 36% and was not fully recovered on the plots at 19 years after fire. Only Belding's ground squirrel (Urocitellus beldingi) demonstrated a measurable response to fire that was...

Fires can benefit plants by disrupting antagonistic interactions.

Fire has a key role in the ecology and evolution of many ecosystems, yet its effects on plant-insect interactions are poorly understood. Because interacting species are likely to respond to fire differently, disruptions of the interactions are expected. We hypothesized that plants that regenerate after fire can benefit through the disruption of their antagonistic interactions. We expected stronger effects on interactions with specialist predators than with generalists. We studied two interactions between two Mediterranean plants (Ulex parviflorus, Asphodelus ramosus) and their specialist seed predators after large wildfires. In A. ramosus we also studied the generalist herbivores. We sampled the interactions in burned and adjacent unburned areas during 2years by estimating seed predation, number of herbivores and fruit set. To assess the effect of the distance to unburned vegetation we sampled plots at two distance classes from the fire perimeter. Even 3years after the fires, Ulex plants experienced lower seed damage by specialists in burned sites. The presence of herbivores on Asphodelus decreased in burned locations, and the variability in their presence was significantly related to fruit set. Generalist herbivores were unaffected. We show that plants can benefit from fire through the disruption of their antagonistic interactions with specialist seed predators for at least a few years. In environments with a long fire history, this effect might be one additional mechanism underlying the success of fire-adapted plants.