Severe wildfires promoted by climate change negatively impact forest amphibian metacommunities

Abstract

Aim: Changes to the extent and severity of wildfires driven by anthropogenic climate change are predicted to have compounding negative consequences for ecological communities. While there is evidence that severe weather events like drought impact amphibian communities, the effects of wildfire on such communities are not well understood. The impact of wildfire on amphibian communities and species is likely to vary, owing to the diversity of their life-history traits. However, no previous research has identified commonalities among the amphibians at most risk from wildfire, limiting conservation initiatives in the aftermath of severe wildfire. We aimed to investigate the impacts of the unprecedented 2019-2020 black summer bushfires on Australian forest amphibian communities.Location: Eastern coast of New South Wales, Australia. Methods:We conducted visual encounter surveys and passive acoustic monitoring across 411 sites within two regions, one in northeast and one in southeast New South Wales. We used fire severity and extent mapping in two multispecies occupancy models to assess the impacts of fire on 35 forest amphibian species. Results:We demonstrate a negative influence of severe fire extent on metacommunity occupancy and species richness in the south with weaker effects in the northreflective of the less severe fires that occurred in this region. Both threatened and common species were impacted by severe wildfire extent. Occupancy of burrowing species and rain forest specialists had mostly negative relationships with severe wildfire extent, while arboreal amphibians had neutral relationships. Main Conclusion:Metacommunity monitoring and adaptive conservation strategies are needed to account for common species after severe climatic events. Ecological, morphological and life-history variation drives the susceptibility of amphibians to wildfires. We document the first evidence of climate change-driven wildfires impacting temperate forest amphibian communities across a broad geographic area, which

Fighting the flames: site-specific effects determine species richness of Australian frogs after fire

“…Furthermore, Beranek et al (2023) found that amphibian metacommunities in the southern regions of NSW were negatively impacted by high fire severity, whereas an effect was not detected in the northern region. cracks or within reeds such as Lomandra spp.…”

“…In addition, rangerestricted species that occur in remote areas are less well sampled via the FrogID project and other citizen science projects. Other survey methods, such as targeted scientific surveys or passive acoustic monitoring (Beranek et al 2023), may be necessary to elucidate the effects of fire on these species. This may explain why, despite considerable data collection, there were still relatively few sites with high fire impact (n = 11; Fig.…”

“…However, these errors are seen when distinguishing between low-and moderate-severity fires, and between high-and extreme-severity fires (White and Gibson 2022). Despite these potential uncertainties, FESM was the most logistically feasible dataset for our large-scale analysis and has been the preferred choice in numerous remote-sensing studies (Bilney et al 2022;Beranek et al 2023;Law et al 2022Law et al , 2023. More information regarding the FESM dataset can be found here https://datasets.seed.nsw.gov.…”

Multi‐taxon biodiversity responses to the 2019–2020 Australian megafires

“…This is likely due to the ability of frogs to seek refuge from the fires (Rowley et al, 2020) and is consistent with our finding of no clear change in frog diversity post-fire in burnt regions compared to before fire or unburnt regions. This does not, however, discount more localized or species-specific impacts of these fires on frogs (e.g., Beranek et al, 2023). Adaptations and behaviors which facilitate fire survival across taxon groupings may reduce immediate mortality and support persistence; potentially alleviating immediate declines in diversity, but this does not necessarily translate to longer term persistence in post-fire landscapes.…”

Don't take my trees: Re‐evaluating the importance of trees when it comes to managing green and golden bell frog, Litoria aurea, habitat

“…Trees provide microhabitats that can buffer amphibians from extreme weather events (Scheffers et al, 2013(Scheffers et al, , 2014. For example, tree hollow use is speculated to explain the absence of fire impacts for arboreal amphibian species during climate change-driven fires (Beranek et al, 2023). It is possible that trees provide a refuge for L. aurea from floods.…”