JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Biogeography. Abstract. A system is proposed whereby ant functional are structurally analogous to grassy forests. The distribution of groups are used as structural attributes to classify ninety-four ant functional groups is considered in relation to stress and Australian ant communities in a manner analogous to the disturbance by adopting Grime's (1979) triangular ordination classification of vegetation according to predominant lifeconcepts and nomenclature, with ant community structural forms. In terms of their responses to stress and disturbance, types being analysed in terms of the relative importance of Dominant Dolichoderinae (DD) are considered analogous to competition, stress and disturbance as factors regulating comtrees, functionally subdominant Generalized Myrmicinae munity structure. DDO and DD1 structural types are stress-tol-(GM) to shrubs and ruderal Opportunists (OPP) to grasses. erant, or ruderal, communities; DD2 and DD3 types are Community types DDO (twenty-two sites), DDl (twenty-two competitive communities when Generalized Myrmicinae are sites), DD2 (eight sites), DD3 (thirty-nine sites) and DD4 abundant, and competitive ruderal or competitive stress-toler-(three sites), respectively, are defined as having the relative ant ruderal when Opportunists are predominant among nonabundance of Dominant Dolichoderinae < 10%, 10-19%, dolichoderines; and DD4 communities are competitive 20-29%, 30-70% and > 90%. They are structurally analogous ruderal. In temperate regions, seasonal changes in ant comto treeless plant communities, open woodlands, woodlands, munity structure parallel those occurring along biogeographiforests and plantations, respectively. DDO communities are cal gradients spanning comparable temperature regimes. A classified as DDOGM (analogous to shrublands) when Gener-positive relationship was found between the abundance of alized Myrmicinae predominate, DDOOPP (analogous to functionally dominant ants (DD + GM) and species richness. grasslands) when Opportunists predominate and DDOCS Plant and ant communities often differ from each other in their (analogous to cold-adapted heathlands) when neither funcresponses to the same stress or disturbance, such that there is tional group is abundant. Similarly, the relative abundances of often a poor correspondence between ant and plant community Generalized Myrmicinae and Opportunists are used to classify structural type at any particular site. DD 1-3 communities in a manner analogous to the classification of woodlands and open forests according to understorey type. DD30PP communities, for example, where

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Fire management is increasingly focusing on introducing heterogeneity in burning patterns under the assumption that "pyrodiversity begets biodiversity." This concept has been formalized as patch mosaic burning (PMB), in which fire is manipulated to create a mosaic of patches representative of a range of fire histories to generate heterogeneity across space and time. Although PMB is an intuitively appealing concept, it has received little critical analysis. Thus we examined ecosystems where PMB has received the most attention and has been the most extensively implemented: tropical and subtropical savannas of Australia and Africa. We identified serious shortcomings of PMB: the ecological significance of different burning patterns remains unknown and details of desired fire mosaics remain unspecified. This has led to fire-management plans based on pyrodiversity rhetoric that lacks substance in terms of operational guidelines and capacity for meaningful evaluation. We also suggest that not all fire patterns are ecologically meaningful: this seems particularly true for the highly fire-prone savannas of Australia and South Africa. We argue that biodiversity-needs-pyrodiversity advocacy needs to be replaced with a more critical consideration of the levels of pyrodiversity needed for biodiversity and greater attention to operational guidelines for its implementation.