Change within and among forest communities: the influence of historic disturbance, environmental gradients, and community attributes

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.

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“…Thus, PERMDISP can be used as a direct test to evaluate differences in beta diversity between treatments (Bunn et al . ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

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

et al. 2015

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“…larger distance to centroid means larger b-diversity. The same approach, advocated by Anderson et al (2011), was used, for example, by Bunn et al (2010) and Taft et al (2011). The analysis was computed in R software (R Development Core Team 2010).…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of bryophyte and vascular plant richness in European subalpine springs

et al. 2011

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The diversity of spring habitats can be determined not only by local environmental conditions, but also by large-scale biogeographical effects. The effects can differ across various groups of organisms. We compared a-, b-and c-diversity patterns of bryophytes and vascular plants of (sub)-alpine springs in three contrasting mountain ranges: Alps (Switzerland), Balkans (Bulgaria), Western Carpathians (Slovakia, Poland). We used univariate and multivariate statistics to test for the effects of pH, conductivity, altitude, slope, mean annual temperature and annual precipitation on diversity patterns of both taxonomic groups and compared diversity patterns among the regions for particular pH and conductivity classes. We identified acidophyte and basiphyte, calcifuge and calcicole species using species response modelling. All regions displayed significant relationship between conductivity and a-diversity of vascular plants. Bulgaria showed the highest a-diversity of vascular plants for the middle part of the conductivity gradient. For both taxonomic groups, the b-diversity in the middle part of gradient was highest in Swiss Alps. The total species pool was lowest in Bulgaria. The percentage of basiphyte and calcicole species was highest in the Alps. In (sub)alpine springs, mineral richness was a better determinant of vascular plant a-diversity than pH, and the extent of the alpine area did not coincide with a-diversity. Observed interregional differences in diversity patterns could be explained by the different proportion of limestone bedrock and different biogeographic history. The Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11258-011-9969-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. 123Plant Ecol (2012) 213:237-249 DOI 10.1007/s11258-011-9969-0 differences in a-diversity between both taxonomic groups are presumably result of the different rates of adaptation processes.

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“…canopy closure). These changes affect species differently, according to their habitat preferences, and may result in differences in diversity, structure and species composition between ages (Bunn et al, 2010). Management practices such as periodic clearing of understory vegetation might have more drastic effects than any competitive or allopathic effects of the planted trees (Atauri et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%