A Multi‐Taxa Assessment of Biodiversity Change After Single and Recurrent Wildfires in a Brazilian Amazon Forest

Abstract

In the last decades, due to human land management that uses fire as a tool, and due to abnormal droughts, many tropical forests have become more susceptible to recurrent wildfires with negative consequences for biodiversity. Yet, studies are usually focused on few taxa and rarely compare different fire frequencies. We examined if the effects of single and recurrent fires are consistent for leaf litter ants, dung beetles, birds (sampled with point‐counts PC and mist net‐MN), saplings, and trees. Recurrent fires had a great effect on forest structure, reducing live tree biomass and number of lianas, and increasing canopy openness and numbers of saplings alive. Recurrent fires had consistently stronger effects on species richness and composition across all sample groups than single fires, except ants. Birds and plants were more grouped in the congruence analysis. The average dissimilarities between control and recurrent‐burned forest were higher than between control and once‐burned forest for all sample groups, furthermore birds and vegetation communities in recurrent‐burned forest are almost entirely dissimilar from the unburned forest. While beta diversity of ants, birds (MN), and trees was not affected by the frequency of fire, it changed for dung beetles, birds (PC), and saplings. Effects of fire on faunal community structure were more due to indirect effects, through vegetation, than through the fire itself. These results reinforce the effect of single and recurrent fires on tropical forests, and highlight the mechanisms acting behind them. Policy‐makers need to explicitly address protection of tropical forests from wildfires in conservation planning.

Impending extinction crisis of the world’s primates: Why primates matter

“…Edge effects predominate in many areas of disturbed forests, exacerbating habitat degradation ( 37 ). Agricultural expansion as well as legal and illegal logging cause further desiccation of vegetation, and human-induced forest fires devastate large areas in primate range regions yearly, resulting in increased tree mortality and losses of up to one-third of canopy cover ( 46 , 47 ). Although the effects of habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation upon primates are mediated by variations in species-specific traits (rarity, trophic levels, dispersal mode, reproductive biology, life history, diet, and ranging behavior), the common response across taxa is population decline (Fig.…”

Short-term changes in the structure of ant assemblages in a Guinean savanna under differing fire regimes at Lamto Scientific Reserve, Côte d'Ivoire

“…Globally, ant community structure was strongly influenced by the indirect effects of fire (i.e. habitat structure) (Silveira et al 2016). The complementarity index indicates high similarity between pre-fire and post-fire ant communities both for all fire regimes combined and fire regimes considered separately.…”

Structure of ground‐dwelling ant communities in burned and unburned areas in Brazilian subtropical grasslands

“…However, fire can also exert negative effects on the ant fauna. For example, species richness may be lower in burned areas as a result of direct mortality, declining resources, changes in the chemical composition of the soil and less favorable microclimate conditions (Frizzo et al 2011;Fagundes et al 2015;Silveira et al 2016). Ant species composition was significantly different between burned and unburned areas.…”

“…Most studies in Brazil regarding the effects of fire on ant communities are concentrated in the Cerrado (Morais & Benson 1988;Souza-Souto et al 2008;Vasconcelos et al 2009;Lopes & Vasconcelos 2011;Frizzo et al 2012) and in the Amazon (Santos et al 2008;Vasconcelos et al 2008;Silveira et al 2013Silveira et al , 2016, with little information available for the subtropical grasslands of southern Brazil. The native subtropical grasslands of Cambará do Sul in southern Brazil are included in the Atlantic Forest biome and have a characteristic biota due to the different vegetation types.…”