The effect of natural disturbances on forest biodiversity: an ecological synthesis

Abstract

Disturbances alter biodiversity via their specific characteristics, including severity and extent in the landscape, which act at different temporal and spatial scales. Biodiversity response to disturbance also depends on the community characteristics and habitat requirements of species. Untangling the mechanistic interplay of these factors has guided disturbance ecology for decades, generating mixed scientific evidence of biodiversity responses to disturbance. Understanding the impact of natural disturbances on biodiversity is increasingly important due to human-induced changes in natural disturbance regimes. In many areas, major natural forest disturbances, such as wildfires, windstorms, and insect outbreaks, are becoming more frequent, intense, severe, and widespread due to climate change and land-use change. Conversely, the suppression of natural disturbances threatens disturbance-dependent biota. Using a meta-analytic approach, we analysed a global data set (with most sampling concentrated in temperate and boreal secondary forests) of species assemblages of 26 taxonomic groups, including plants, animals, and fungi collected from forests affected by wildfires, windstorms, and insect outbreaks. The overall effect of natural disturbances on α-diversity did not differ significantly from zero, but some taxonomic groups responded positively to disturbance, while others tended to respond negatively.

Increasing aridity causes larger and more severe forest fires across Europe

“…Forest disturbances are increasing around the globe (McDowell et al, 2020; Seidl et al, 2011, 2017) and forest fires play an important role in this increase (Abatzoglou & Williams, 2016; Curtis et al, 2018; Liu et al, 2019; Westerling et al, 2006). While disturbances are important drivers of natural ecosystem dynamics (Bowman et al, 2009; Viljur et al, 2022), global warming may disrupt natural disturbance regimes and alter post‐disturbance forest development trajectories (Bebi et al, 2017; Johnstone et al, 2016; Seidl & Turner, 2022). Increasing summer aridity has been suggested as a main driver of changing forest fire regimes (Huang et al, 2020; Jolly et al, 2015; Williams et al, 2019).…”

Recent fire in a Mediterranean ecosystem strengthens hoverfly populations and their interaction networks with plants

“…Over the last few decades, substantial progress has been made to track the response of pollinator diversity to wildfires (e.g., Adedoja et al, 2019 ; Burkle et al, 2019 ; Carbone et al, 2019 , 2017 ; Lazarina et al, 2019 ; Mason et al, 2021 ; Moretti et al, 2009 ; Peralta et al, 2017 , 2001 ; Potts et al, 2003 ; Viljur et al, 2022 ). This work has shown that fire can affect insect pollinators in numerous ways other than via direct mortality (Brown et al, 2017 ).…”

Global effects of forest modification on herpetofauna communities

“…We examined several hypotheses. First, forest transformations lead to decreased species and phylogenetic diversity compared with natural forests, whereas disturbances lead to either diversity increases or diversity decreases because many species (especially reptiles associated with open canopies) rely on such disturbances to create habitat (Viljur et al., 2022 ). Second, communities in transformed forests differ more from natural forests than communities in disturbed forests.…”