Responses of invasive predators and native prey to a prescribed forest fire

Journal of Mammalogy

Volumn 98, Issue 3, 2017, Pages 835-847

  Hradsky, Bronwyn A ^a,c   Mildwaters, Craig ^a   Ritchie, Euan G ^b   Christie, Fiona ^a   Di Stefano, Julian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

^b DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

Author keywords

Australia; critical weight range mammal; diet; ecological synergy; Felis catus; fire; functional response; mesopredator; predator prey interactions; Vulpes vulpes

Indexed keywords

EID: 85028747467     PISSN: 00222372     EISSN: 15451542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/JMAMMAL/GYX010     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. ARTHUR, A. D., P. C. CATLING, AND A. REID. 2012. Relative influence of habitat structure, species interactions and rainfall on the postfire population dynamics of ground-dwelling vertebrates. Austral Ecology 8:958–970.
2. BANKS, P. B. 1999. Predation by introduced foxes on native bush rats in Australia: do foxes take the doomed surplus? Journal of Applied Ecology 36:1063–1071.
3. BANKS, S. C., E. J. KNIGHT, L. MCBURNEY, D. BLAIR, AND D. B. LINDENMAYER. 2011. The effects of wildfire on mortality and resources for an arboreal marsupial: resilience to fire events but susceptibility to fire regime change. PLoS One 6:e22952.
4. BARNARD, P. 1987. Foraging site selection by three raptors in relation to grassland burning in a montane habitat. African Journal of Ecology 25:35–45.
5. BARTON, K. 2016. MuMIn: Multi-Model Inference. R package version 1.15.6. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=MuMIn. Accessed 1 May 2016.
6. BATES, D., M. MAECHLER, B. BOLKER, AND S. WALKER. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67:1–48.
7. BJORNSTAD, O. N. 2016. ncf: spatial nonparametric covariance functions. R package version 1.1-7. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ncf. Accessed 1 May 2016.
8. BOM. 2014. Climate data online. Bureau of Meterology. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml. Accessed 10 July 2014.
9. BOND, W. J., AND J. E. KEELEY. 2005. Fire as a global ‘herbivore’: the ecology and evolution of flammable ecosystems. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20:387–394.
10. BOWMAN, D. M. J. S., ET AL. 2009. Fire in the Earth system. Science 324:481–484.
11. BRUNNER, H., AND B. COMAN. 1974. The identification of mammalian hair. Inkata Press, Melbourne, Australia.
12. BURBIDGE, A. A., AND N. L. MCKENZIE. 1989. Patterns in the modern decline of Western Australia vertebrate fauna: causes and conservation implications. Biological Conservation 50:143–198.
13. BURNHAM, K. P., AND D. R. ANDERSON. 2002. Model selection and multimodel inference. A practical information-theoretic approach. 2nd ed. Springer-Verlag, New York.
14. CARTER, A., G. W. LUCK, AND S. P. MCDONALD. 2012. Ecology of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) in an agricultural landscape. 2. Home range and movements. Australian Mammalogy 34:175–187.
15. CERVENY, J., S. BEGALL, P. KOUBEK, P. NOVAKOVA, AND H. BURDA. 2011. Directional preference may enhance hunting accuracy in foraging foxes. Biology Letters 7:355–357.
16. CHALFOUN, A. D., F. R. THOMPSON, AND M. J. RATNASWAMY. 2002. Nest predators and fragmentation: a review and meta-analysis. Conservation Biology 16:306–318.
17. CHISHOLM, R. A., AND R. TAYLOR. 2010. Body size and extinction risk in Australian mammals: an information-theoretic approach. Austral Ecology 35:616–623.
18. COLWELL, R. K. 2013. EstimateS: statistical estimation of species richness and shared species from samples. Version 9.1.0. purl.oclc. org/estimates. Accessed 1 July 2015.
19. CONNER, L. M., S. B. CASTLEBERRY, AND A. M. DERRICK. 2011. Effects of mesopredators and prescribed fire on Hispid Cotton Rat survival and cause-specific mortality. Journal of Wildlife Management 75:938–944.
20. CROSS, M. D., K. V. ROOT, C. J. MEHNE, J. MCGOWAN-STINSKI, D. PEARSALL, AND J. C. GILLINGHAM. 2015. Multi-scale responses of eastern massasauga rattlesnakes (Sistrurus catenatus) to prescribed fire. American Midland Naturalist 173:346–362.
21. DAWSON, J. P., A. W. CLARIDGE, B. TRIGGS, AND D. J. PAULL. 2007. Diet of a native carnivore, the spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus), before and after an intense wildfire. Wildlife Research 34:342–351.
22. DEES, C. S., J. D. CLARK, AND F. T. VAN MANEN. 2001. Florida panther habitat use in response to prescribed fire. Journal of Wildlife Management 65:141–147.
23. DEPI. 2013. Fire Operations Plan 2013/14 - 2015/16, Barwon South West Region. Department of Environment and Primary Industries, Geelong, Australia. http://www.depi.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/200897/2013-Barwon-South-West-FOP.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2015.
24. DEXTER, N., M. HUDSON, T. CARTER, AND C. MACGREGOR. 2011. Habitat-dependent population regulation in an irrupting population of long-nosed bandicoots (Perameles nasuta). Austral Ecology 36:745–754.
25. DIDHAM, R. K., J. M. TYLIANAKIS, N. J. GEMMELL, T. A. RAND, AND R. M. EWERS. 2007. Interactive effects of habitat modification and species invasion on native species decline. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22:489–496.
26. DOHERTY, T. S., C. R. DICKMAN, D. G. NIMMO, AND E. G. RITCHIE. 2015. Multiple threats, or multiplying the threats? Interactions between invasive predators and other ecological disturbances. Biological Conservation 190:60–68.
27. DRISCOLL, D. A., ET AL. 2010. Fire management for biodiversity conservation: key research questions and our capacity to answer them. Biological Conservation 143:1928–1939.
28. EBY, S., A. MOSSERC, A. SWANSON, C. PACKER, AND M. RITCHIE. 2013. The impact of burning on lion Panthera leo habitat choice in an African savanna. Current Zoology 59:335–339.
29. FISHER, D. O., ET AL. 2014. The current decline of tropical marsupials in Australia: is history repeating? Global Ecology and Biogeography 23:181–190.
30. FISKE, I. J., AND R. B. CHANDLER. 2011. Unmarked: an R package for fitting hierarchical models of wildlife occurrence and abundance. Journal of Statistical Software 43:1–23.
31. FORDYCE, A., B. A. HRADSKY, E. G. RITCHIE, AND J. DI STEFANO. 2016. Fire affects microhabitat selection, movement patterns and body condition of an Australian rodent (Rattus fuscipes). Journal of Mammalogy 97:102–111.
32. FOX, B. J. 1982. Fire and mammalian secondary succession in an Australian coastal heath. Ecology 63:1332–1341.
33. GARVEY, N., D. BEN-AMI, D. RAMP, AND D. B. CROFT. 2010. Survival behaviour of swamp wallabies during prescribed burning and wildfire. Wildlife Research 37:1–12.
34. GOSZCZYNSKI, J. 1974. Studies on the food of foxes. Acta Theriologica 19:1–18.
35. GREEN, K., AND G. SANECKI. 2006. Immediate and short-term responses of bird and mammal assemblages to a subalpine wildfire in the Snowy Mountains, Australia. Austral Ecology 31:673–681.
36. GRIFFITHS, A. D., AND B. W. BROOK. 2014. Effect of fire on small mammals: a systematic review. International Journal of Wildland Fire 23:1034–1043.
37. GUREJA, N., AND N. OWEN-SMITH. 2002. Comparative use of burnt grassland by rare antelope species in a lowveld game ranch, South Africa. South African Journal of Wildlife Research 32:31–38.
38. HOOD, G. M. 2009. PopTools version 3.2. www.poptools.org. Accessed 12 December 2013.
39. HRADSKY, B. A. K. 2016. Interactions between invasive predators, native mammals and fire in a forest ecosystem. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
40. IVLEV, V. S. 1961. Experimental ecology of the feeding of fishes. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.
41. KLARE, U., J. F. KAMLER, AND D. W. MACDONALD. 2011. A comparison and critique of different scat-analysis methods for determining carnivore diet. Mammal Review 41:294–312.
42. KUTT, A. S. 2012. Feral cat (Felis catus) prey size and selectivity in north-eastern Australia: implications for mammal conservation. Journal of Zoology 287:292–300.
43. LEAHY, L., ET AL. 2015. Amplified predation after fire suppresses rodent populations in Australia’s tropical savannas. Wildlife Research 42:705–716.
44. LECHOWICZ, M. J. 1982. The sampling characteristics of electivity indexes. Oecologia 52:22–30.
45. LETNIC, M., C. R. DICKMAN, M. K. TISCHLER, B. TAMAYO, AND C. L. BEH. 2004. The responses of small mammals and lizards to post-fire succession and rainfall in arid Australia. Journal of Arid Environments 59:85–114.
46. MCGREGOR, H. W., S. LEGGE, M. E. JONES, AND C. N. JOHNSON. 2014. Landscape management of fire and grazing regimes alters the fine-scale habitat utilisation by feral cats. PLoS One 9:e109097.
47. MCGREGOR, H., S. LEGGE, M. E. JONES, AND C. N. JOHNSON. 2015. Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PLoS One 10:e0133915.
48. MCGREGOR, H. W., S. LEGGE, M. E. JONES, AND C. N. JOHNSON. 2016. Extraterritorial hunting expeditions to intense fire scars by feral cats. Scientific Reports 6:22559.
49. MONAMY, V., AND B. J. FOX. 2000. Small mammal succession is determined by vegetation density rather than time elapsed since disturbance. Austral Ecology 25:580–587.
50. MORRIS, G., J. A. HOSTETLER, M. K. OLI, AND L. M. CONNER. 2011. Effects of predation, fire, and supplemental feeding on populations of two species of Peromyscus mice. Journal of Mammalogy 92:934–944.
51. 2 from generalized linear mixed-effects models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 4:133–142.
52. OGEN-ODOI, A. A., AND T. G. DILWORTH. 1984. Effects of grassland burning on the savanna hare-predator relationships in Uganda. African Journal of Ecology 22:101–106.
53. PANZACCHI, M., J. D. C. LINNELL, M. ODDEN, J. ODDEN, AND R. ANDERSEN. 2009. Habitat and roe deer fawn vulnerability to red fox predation. Journal of Animal Ecology 78:1124–1133.
54. PARR, C. L., AND A. N. ANDERSEN. 2006. Patch mosaic burning for biodiversity conservation: a critique of the pyrodiversity paradigm. Conservation Biology 20:1610–1619.
55. PASTRO, L. A., C. R. DICKMAN, AND M. LETNIC. 2014. Fire type and hemisphere determine the effects of fire on the alpha and beta diversity of vertebrates: a global meta-analysis. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23:1146–1156.
56. PENMAN, T. D., ET AL. 2011. Prescribed burning: how can it work to conserve the things we value?. International Journal of Wildland Fire 20:721–733.
57. R CORE TEAM. 2016. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
58. RITCHIE, E. G., AND C. N. JOHNSON. 2009. Predator interactions, mesopredator release and biodiversity conservation. Ecology Letters 12:982–998.
59. ROBINSON, N. M., ET AL. 2013. Refuges for fauna in fire-prone landscapes: their ecological function and importance. Journal of Applied Ecology 50:1321–1329.
60. SALO, P., E. KORPIMAKI, P. B. BANKS, M. NORDSTROM, AND C. R. DICKMAN. 2007. Alien predators are more dangerous than native predators to prey populations. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B. Biological Sciences 274:1237–1243.
61. SANTOS, X., AND M. CHEYLAN. 2013. Taxonomic and functional response of a Mediterranean reptile assemblage to a repeated fire regime. Biological Conservation 168:90–98.
62. SITTERS, H., J. DI STEFANO, F. J. CHRISTIE, P. SUNNUCKS, AND A. YORK. 2015. Bird diversity increases after patchy prescribed fire: implications from a before-after control-impact study. International Journal of Wildland Fire 24:690–701.
63. SPENCER, R. J., V. C. CAVANOUGH, G. S. BAXTER, AND M. S. KENNEDY. 2005. Adult free zones in small mammal populations: response of Australian native rodents to reduced cover. Austral Ecology 30:876–884.
64. STAWSKI, C., G. KöRTNER, J. NOWACK, AND F. GEISER. 2015. The importance of mammalian torpor for survival in a post-fire landscape. Biology Letters 11:20150134.
65. SWAN, M., F. J. CHRISTIE, H. SITTERS, A. YORK, AND J. DI STEFANO. 2015. Predicting faunal fire responses in heterogeneous landscapes: the role of habitat structure. Ecological Applications 25:2293–2305.
66. SWAN, M., C. GALINDEZ-SILVA, F. CHRISTIE, A. YORK, AND J. DI STEFANO. 2016. Contrasting responses of small mammals to fire and topographic refugia. Austral Ecology 41:443–451.
67. THOMPSON, C. M., D. J. AUGUSTINE, AND D. M. MAYERS. 2008. Swift fox response to prescribed fire in shortgrass steppe. Western North American Naturalist 68:251–256.
68. TORRE, I., AND M. DIAZ. 2004. Small mammal abundance in Mediterranean post-fire habitats: a role for predators? Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology 25:137–142.
69. WOINARSKI, J. C. Z., A. A. BURBIDGE, AND P. L. HARRISON. 2015. Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna: decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112:4531–4540.
70. ZIEMBICKI, M. R., ET AL. 2015. Stemming the tide: progress towards resolving the causes of decline and implementing management responses for the disappearing mammal fauna of northern Australia. Therya 6:169–225.
71. ZUUR, A. F., E. N. IENO, N. J. WALKER, A. A. SAVELIEV, AND G. M. SMITH. 2009. Mixed effects models and extensions in ecology with R. Springer, New York.
72. ZWOLAK, R., D. E. PEARSON, Y. K. ORTEGA, AND E. E. CRONE. 2012. Mechanisms driving postfire abundance of a generalist mammal. Canadian Journal of Zoology-Revue Canadienne De Zoologie 90:51–60.