Wildfires are common natural perturbations in Mediterranean ecosystems. Their frequency and extent have changed in recent decades to become one of the main ecological problems for wildlife. The response of fauna to wildfires depends greatly on the life histories and biological traits of each species. Terrestrial gastropods have limited mobility, and their presence is restricted by the vegetal and abiotic characteristics of habitats. For this reason, they are expected to have a low ability to recolonize burned areas. We have explored their survivorship and recolonization patterns according to the crypticrefuge and fire-edge models in a Mediterranean protected area affected by a large fire in August 2003. The low number of species recorded at burned sites demonstrates the negative effects of a wildfire on the richness of gastropod assemblages 4 years after the perturbation. However, the total number of living individuals did not vary between burned and unburned areas, suggesting an after-fire shift in dominant species from woodland to open-space species. Forest species with wide European distributions dominated in unburned sites, whereas open-space species and xerophytic Mediterranean species were present at burned sites. These differences were evident even at the burned sites closest to the unburned forest, suggesting low recolonization rates from the fire edge. By contrast, the abundance of xerophilous species as well as isolated records of mesophilous species in the burned areas suggests the survival of small populations and further recuperation after fire following the cryptic-refuge model.
Fire is a major agent involved in landscape transformation and an indirect cause of changes in species composition. Responses to fire may vary greatly depending on life histories and functional traits of species. We have examined the taxonomic and functional responses to fire of eight taxonomic animal groups displaying a gradient of dietary and mobility patterns: Gastropoda, Heteroptera, Formicidae, Coleoptera, Araneae, Orthoptera, Reptilia and Aves. The fieldwork was conducted in a Mediterranean protected area on 3 sites (one unburnt and two burnt with different postfire management practices) with five replicates per site. We collected information from 4606 specimens from 274 animal species. Similarity in species composition and abundance between areas was measured by the Bray-Curtis index and ANOSIM, and comparisons between animal and plant responses by Mantel tests. We analyze whether groups with the highest percentage of omnivorous species, these species being more generalist in their dietary habits, show weak responses to fire (i.e. more similarity between burnt and unburnt areas), and independent responses to changes in vegetation. We also explore how mobility, i.e. dispersal ability, influences responses to fire. Our results demonstrate that differences in species composition and abundance between burnt and unburnt areas differed among groups. We found a tendency towards presenting lower differences between areas for groups with higher percentages of omnivorous species. Moreover, taxa with a higher percentage of omnivorous species had significantly more independent responses of changes in vegetation. High- (e.g. Aves) and low-mobility (e.g. Gastropoda) groups had the strongest responses to fire (higher R scores of the ANOSIM); however, we failed to find a significant general pattern with all the groups according to their mobility. Our results partially support the idea that functional traits underlie the response of organisms to environmental changes caused by fire.
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