Land management agencies in Queensland conduct planned burning for a variety of reasons, principally for management of fuels for human asset protection and biodiversity management. Using Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service’s archived manually derived fire reports, this study considered the individual components of the fire regime (extent, frequency and season) to determine variation between planned and unplanned fire regimes in south-east Queensland. Overall, between 2004 and 2015, planned fire accounted for 31.6% and unplanned fire 68.4% of all fire on Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service state-managed land. Unplanned fire was more common in spring (September–October), and planned fire was more common in winter (June–August). Unplanned fire affected 71.4% of open forests and woodlands (148563ha), whereas 58.8% of melaleuca communities (8016ha) and 66.6% of plantations (2442ha) were burnt with planned fire. Mapping fire history at a regional scale can be readily done with existing publicly available datasets, which can be used to inform the assessment of planned burning effectiveness for human asset protection and the management of biodiversity. Fire management will benefit from the continued recording of accurate fire occurrence data, which allows for detailed fire regime mapping and subsequent adaptive management of fire regimes in the public domain.

Summary Fire is an important part of many Australian ecosystems, and determining how it affects different vegetation communities and associated fauna is of particular interest to land managers. Here, we report on a study that used sites established during a 39‐year fire experiment in coastal heathland in southeastern Queensland to compare arthropod abundance and vegetation in 1.5–2.6 ha sites that were (i) long unburnt, (ii) burnt every 5 years and (iii) burnt every 3 years. We found that the abundance of ants was more than four times higher in the frequently burnt sites compared to long unburnt sits. Moreover, long unburnt sites had greater dominance of Xanthorrhoea johnsonii and Caustis recurvata, whereas burnt sites had greater cover of Lomandra filiformis, Leucopogon margarodes and Leucopogon leptospermoides. Our findings show that frequent fire can alter vegetation structure and composition, and this is matched by an increase in the relative dominance of ants in the arthropod community.

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Fire has a varied influence on plant and animal species through direct (e.g. fire-induced mortality) and indirect (e.g. modification of habitat) effects. Our understanding of the influence of fire regime on invertebrates and their response to fire-induced modifications to habitat is poor. We aimed to determine the response of a beetle family (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) to varying fire treatments and hypothesised that the abundance of cerambycid beetles is influenced by fire frequency due to modifications in habitat associated with the fire treatments. Arthropods were sampled across 3 months in annually and triennially burnt areas (treatments starting in 1952 and 1973 respectively), an area unburnt since 1946, and a former unburnt treatment, burnt by wildfire in 2006. Eleven different cerambycid taxa were collected using flight intercept panel traps, dominated by three species (Ipomoria tillides, Adrium sp. and Bethelium signiferum) which made up 99% of individuals collected. Over the sampling period the long unburnt treatment had significantly lower species richness than the triennial and wildfire treatments. Cerambycid abundance was significantly higher in the triennially burnt treatment than in all other fire treatments. Ipomoria tillides was more abundant in both frequently burnt treatments, Adrium sp. was more common in triennially burnt areas, whereas B. signiferum, was more common in the wildfire affected treatment. Some, but not all, cerambycid beetles were more common in areas with a more open understorey (i.e. resulting from frequent burning), and lower tree basal area, as this likely influences their ability to fly easily between food sources. Cerambycid abundance was positively related to the volume of coarse woody debris and healthy tree crowns. Cerambycid beetles were clearly influenced by historic fire regime, suggesting that changes in fire regime can potentially have a profound influence on arthropod assemblages, and subsequent influences on ecosystem processes, which are currently poorly understood.