Evaluating the role of fire disturbance in structuring small reptile communities in temperate forests

Biodiversity and Conservation

Volumn 22, Issue 9, 2013, Pages 1949-1963

  Hu, Yang ^a   Urlus, Jake ^b   Gillespie, Graeme ^a   Letnic, Michael ^c   Jessop, Tim S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

^b Ecology Australia Pty Ltd   (Australia)

^c UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

Author keywords

Disturbance; Fire; Habitat accommodation model; Intermediate disturbance hypothesis; Reptile community; Succession

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; BIODIVERSITY; CHRONOSEQUENCE; DISTURBANCE; FIRE BEHAVIOR; FOREST FIRE; HABITAT LOSS; INTERMEDIATE DISTURBANCE HYPOTHESIS; RELATIVE ABUNDANCE; REPTILE; SPECIES RICHNESS; SUCCESSION; TEMPERATE FOREST;

REPTILIA;

EID: 84881029695     PISSN: 09603115     EISSN: 15729710     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10531-013-0519-z     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Alexander JSA, Scott DJ, Loyn RH (2002) Impacts of timber harvesting on mammals, reptiles and nocturnal birds in native hard-wood forests of East Gippsland, Victoria: a retrospective approach. Aust For 65: 182-210.
2. Andersen AN, Cook GD, Corbett LK, Douglas MM, Eager RW, Russell-Smith J, Setterfield SA, Williams RJ, Woinarski JCZ (2005) Fire frequency and biodiversity conservation in Australian tropical savannas: implications from the Kapalga fire experiment. Austral Ecol 30: 155-167.
3. Brown GW (2001) The influence of habitat disturbance on reptiles in a box-ironbark eucalypt forest of south-eastern Australia. Biodivers Conserv 10: 161-176.
4. Brown GW, Nelson JL (1993) Influence of successional stage of Eucalyptus regnans (mountain ash) on habitat use by reptiles in the Central Highlands, Victoria. Aust J Ecol 18: 405-417.
5. Brown GW, Bennett AF, Potts JM (2008) Regional faunal decline-reptile occurrence in fragmented rural landscapes of south-eastern Australia. Wildl Res 35: 8-18.
6. Bureau of Meteorology (2010) Australian Government.
7. Burnham KP, Anderson DR (2002) Model selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach, 2nd edn. Springer-Verlag, New York.
8. Cano PD, Leynaud GC (2010) Effects of fire and cattle grazing on amphibians and lizards in northeastern Argentina (Humid Chaco). Eur J Wildl Res 56: 411-420.
9. Connell JH (1978) Diversity in tropical forests and coral reefs. Science 199: 1302-1310.
10. Cunningham SC, Babb RD, Jones TR, Taubert BD, Vega R (2002) Reaction of lizard populations to a catastrophic wildfire in a central Arizona mountain range. Biol Conserv 107: 193-201.
11. Dale VH, Joyce LA, McNulty S, Neilson RP, Ayres MP, Flannigan MD, Hanson PJ, Irland LC, Lugo AE, Peterson CJ, Simberloff D, Swanson FJ, Stocks BJ, Wotton BM (2001) Climate change and forest disturbances. Bioscience 51: 723-734.
12. Dormann CF, McPherson JM, Araujo MB, Bivand R, Bolliger J, Carl G, Davies RG, Hirzel A, Jetz W, Kissling WD, Kuhn I, Ohlemuller M, Peres-Neto PR, Reineking B, Schroder B, Schurr FM, Wilson R (2007) Models to account for spatial autocorrelation in the analysis of species distributional data: a review. Ecography 30: 609-628.
13. Dornelas M (2010) Disturbance and change in biodiversity. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 365: 3719-3727.
14. Driscoll DA, Henderson MK (2008) How many common reptile species are fire specialists? A replicated natural experiment highlights the predictive weakness of a fire succession model. Biol Conserv 141: 460-471.
15. Driscoll DA, Lindenmayer DB, Bennett AF, Bode M, Bradstock RA, Cary GJ, Clarke MF, Dexter N, Fensham R, Friend G, Gill M, James S, Kay G, Keith DA, MacGregor C, Russell-Smith J, Salt D, Watson JEM, Williams RJ, York A (2010) Fire management for biodiversity conservation: key research questions and our capacity to answer them. Biol Conserv 143: 1928-1939.
16. DSE (2009) Management procedures for timber harvesting, roading and regeneration in Victoria's State forests. Department of Sustainability and Environment, Mildura.
17. Ford WM, Menzel MA, McGill DW, Laerm J, McCay TS (1999) Effects of a community restoration fire on small mammals and herpetofauna in the southern Appalachians. For Ecol Manag 114: 233-243.
18. Fox BJ (1982) Fire and mammalian secondary succession in an Australian coastal heath. Ecology 63: 1332-1341.
19. Friend GR (1993) Impact of fire on small vertebrates in Mallee woodlands and heathlands of temperate Australia: a review. Biol Conserv 65: 99-114.
20. Garden JG, McAlpine CA, Possingham HP, Jones DN (2007) Habitat structure is more important than vegetation composition for local-level management of native terrestrial reptile and small mammal species living in urban remnants: a case study from Brisbane, Australia. Aust Ecol 32: 669-685.
21. Gaston KJ, Fuller RA (2008) Commonness, population depletion and conservation biology. Trends Ecol Evol 23: 14-19.
22. Greenberg CH, Waldrop TA (2008) Short-term response of reptiles and amphibians to prescribed fire and mechanical fuel reduction in a southern Appalachian upland hardwood forest. For Ecol Manag 255: 2883-2893.
23. Greenberg CH, Neary DG, Harris LD (1994) Effect of high-intensity wildfire and silvicultural treatments on reptile communities in sand-pine scrub. Conserv Biol 8: 1047-1057.
24. Haslem A, Kelly LT, Nimmo DG, Watson SJ, Kenny SA, Taylor RS, Avitabile SC, Callister KE, Spence-Bailey LM, Clarke MF, Bennett AF (2011) J Appl Ecol 48: 247-256.
25. Heatwole HF, Taylor J (1987) Ecology of reptiles. Surrey Beatty and Sons Pty, Chipping Norton, NSW.
26. Heltzel JM, Leberg PL (2006) Effects of selective logging on breeding bird communities in bottomland hardwood forests in Louisiana. J Wildl Manag 70: 1416-1424.
27. Hooper DU, Chapin FS III, Ewel JJ, Hector A, Inchausti P, Lavorel S, Lawton JH, Lodge DM, Loreau M, Naeem S, Schmid B, Setala H, Symstad AJ, Vandermeer J, Wardle DA (2005) Effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning: a consensus of current knowledge. Ecol Monogr 75: 3-35.
28. Howard R, Williamson I, Mather P (2003) Structural aspects of microhabitat selection by the skink Lampropholis delicata. J Herpetol 37: 613-617.
29. Hu Y, Magaton S, Gillespie G, Jessop TS (in press) Small reptile communities to rotational logging. Biol Conserv.
30. Jellinek S, Driscoll DA, Kirkpatrick JB (2004) Environmental and vegetation variables have a greater influence than habitat fragmentation in structuring lizard communities in remnant urban bushland. Austral Ecol 29: 294-304.
31. Kelly LT, Nimmo DG, Spence-Bailey LM, Haslem A, Watson SJ, Clarke MF, Bennett AF (2012) Influence of fire history on small mammal distributions: insights from a 100-year post-fire chronosequence. Divers Distrib 17: 462-473.
32. Legge S, Murphy S, Heathcote J, Flaxman E, Augusteyn J, Crossman M (2008) The short-term effects of an extensive and high-intensity fire on vertebrates in the tropical savannas of the central Kimberley, northern Australia. Wildl Res 35: 33-43.
33. Letnic M, Dickman CR, Tischler MK, Tamayo B, Beh C-L (2004) The responses of small mammals and lizards to post-fire succession and rainfall in arid Australia. J Arid Environ 59: 85-114.
34. Lindenmayer DB (2009) Forest wildlife management and conservation. Ann NY Acad Sci 1162: 284-310.
35. Lindenmayer DB, Wood JT, MacGregor C, Michael DR, Cunningham RB, Crane M, Montague-Drake R, Brown D, Muntz R, Driscoll DA (2008) How predictable are reptile responses to wildfire? Oikos 117: 1086-1097.
36. Logan M (2010) Biostatistical design and analysis using R: a practical guide. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken.
37. Lunney D, Eby P, O'Connell M (1991) Effects of logging, fire and drought on three species of lizards in Mumbulla State Forest on the south coast of New South Wales. Aust J Ecol 16: 33-46.
38. Mackey RL, Currie DJ (2000) A re-examination of the expected effects of disturbance on diversity. Oikos 88: 483-493.
39. Mackey RL, Currie DJ (2001) The diversity-disturbance relationship: is it generally strong and peaked? Ecology 82: 3479-3492.
40. Masters P (1996) The effects of fire-driven succession on reptiles in spinifex grasslands at Uluru National Park, Northern Territory. Wildl Res 23: 39-48.
41. McCullagh P, Nelder JA (1989) Generalized linear models, 2nd edn. Chapman and Hall, London.
42. McGill BJ, Etienne RS, Gray JS, Alonso D, Anderson MJ, Benecha HK, Dornelas M, Enquist BJ, Green JL, He F, Hurlbert AH, Magurran AE, Marquet PA, Maurer BA, Ostling A, Soykan CU, Ugland KI, White EP (2007) Species abundance distributions: moving beyond single prediction theories to integration within an ecological framework. Ecol Lett 10: 995-1015.
43. Mott B, Alford RA, Schwarzkopf L (2010) Tropical reptiles in pine forests: assemblage responses to plantations and plantation management by burning. For Ecol Manag 259: 916-925.
44. Mushinsky HR (1985) Fire and the Florida sandhill herpetofaunal community: with special attention to responses of Cnemidophorus sexlineatus. Herpetologica 41: 333-342.
45. Oksanen J, Blanchet FG, Kindt R, Legendre P, O'Hara R, Simpson GL, Solymos P, Stevens MHH, Wagner H (2011) vegan: community ecology package. R package version 1. 17-10.
46. Parr CL, Andersen AN (2006) Patch mosaic burning for biodiversity conservation: a critique of the pyrodiversity paradigm. Conserv Biol 20: 1610-1619.
47. Penn AM, Sherwin WB, Lunney D, Banks PB (2003) The effects of a low-intensity fire on small mammals and lizards in a logged, burnt forest. Wildl Res 30: 477-486.
48. Pianka ER (1973) The structure of lizard communities. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 4: 53-74.
49. R Development Core Team (2010) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna.
50. Radke NJ, Wester DB, Perry G, Rideout-Hanzak S (2008) Short-term effects of prescribed fire on lizards in mesquite-Ashe juniper vegetation in central Texas. Appl Herpetol 5: 281-292.
51. Russell KR, van Lear DH, Guynn DC Jr (1999) Prescribed fire effects on herpetofauna: review and management implications. Wildl Soc B 27: 374-384.
52. Ruthven DC III, Kazmaier RT, Jamis MW (2008) Short-term response of herpetofauna to various burning regimes in the South Texas plains. Southwest Nat 53: 480-487.
53. Santos X, Poquet JM (2010) Ecological succession and habitat attributes affect the postfire response of a Mediterranean reptile community. Eur J Wildl Res 56: 895-905.
54. Spies TA, Lindenmayer DB, Gill AM, Stephens SL, Agee JK (2012) Challenges and a checklist for biodiversity conservation in fire-prone forests: perspectives from the Pacific Northwest of USA and southeastern Australia. Biol Conserv 145: 5-14.
55. Svensson JR, Lindegarth M, Jonsson PR, Pavia H (2012) Disturbance-diversity models: what do they really predict and how are they tested? Proc Biol Sci 279: 2163-2170.
56. Taylor JE, Fox BJ (2001) Disturbance effects from fire and mining produce different lizard communities in eastern Australian forests. Aust Ecol 26: 193-204.
57. Urlus J (2009) The influence of vegetation structure and land management on east Gippsland reptile communities. Honours Thesis, Deakin University, Melbourne.
58. Valentine LE, Reaveley A, Johnson B, Fisher R, Wilson BA (2012) Burning in banksia woodlands: how does the fire-free period influence reptile communities? PLoS One 7: 1-13.
59. Wanger TC, Saro A, Iskandar DT, Brook BW, Sodhi NS, Clough Y, Tscharntke T (2009) Conservation value of cacao agroforestry for amphibians and reptiles in South-east Asia: combining correlative models with follow-up field experiments. J Appl Ecol 46: 823-832.
60. Westgate MJ, Driscoll DA, Lindenmayer DB (2012) Can the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and information on species traits predict anuran responses to fire? Oikos 121(10): 1516-1524.
61. Wilson S, Swan G (2008) A complete guide to reptiles of Australia. New Holland Publishers, Chatswood, NSW.
62. Wood SN (2006) Generalized additive models: an introduction with R. Chapman and Hall, Boca Raton.
63. Zuur AF, Ieno EN, Walker N, Saveliev AA, Smith GM (2009) Mixed effects models and extensions in ecology with R. Springer, New York.