Animal movements in fire‐prone landscapes

Abstract

Movement is a trait of fundamental importance in ecosystems subject to frequent disturbances, such as fire-prone ecosystems. Despite this, the role of movement in facilitating responses to fire has received little attention. Herein, we consider how animal movement interacts with fire history to shape species distributions. We consider how fire affects movement between habitat patches of differing fire histories that occur across a range of spatial and temporal scales, from daily foraging bouts to infrequent dispersal events, and annual migrations. We review animal movements in response to the immediate and abrupt impacts of fire, and the longer-term successional changes that fires set in train. We discuss how the novel threats of altered fire regimes, landscape fragmentation, and invasive species result in suboptimal movements that drive populations downwards. We then outline the types of data needed to study animal movements in relation to fire and novel threats, to hasten the integration of movement ecology and fire ecology. We conclude by outlining a research agenda for the integration of movement ecology and fire ecology by identifying key research questions that emerge from our synthesis of animal movements in fire-prone ecosystems.

Predator responses to fire: A global systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Measuring responses to disturbances in an informative and repeatable way is difficult and requires consistent approaches to allow for comparability between studies (Foster, Sato, Lindenmayer, & Barton, ). Fire size, severity, patchiness, season and edge configuration can all influence how fauna, including predators, respond to fire spatially and temporally (Nimmo et al, ; Parkins, York, & Di Stefano, ). For example, how a predator responds to a small fire might be very different to its response to a large fire, because changes in resource availability may differ.…”

“…While pursuit predators may be more efficient hunters in burnt areas where physical obstacles to pursuit are fewer (Torretta, Caviglia, Serafini, & Meriggi, ), ambush predators might be more successful in unburnt areas, as vegetative cover helps predators to avoid detection and launch short, explosive attacks on prey (Rosas‐Rosas, Bender, & Valdez, ). Predators with large home ranges may be more resistant to the impacts of fire, as their broad‐scale movements reduce their reliance on local habitats and allow them to exploit resources across both burnt and unburnt areas (Nimmo et al, ). The scale, patchiness and severity of fires—and the ecosystem context in which they occur—may also influence how individual predators and their populations will respond.…”

Modeling variability in the fire response of an endangered bird to improve fire‐management

“…It is also likely that the frequency of dispersal events required to maintain a population is greater at high elevations than at low elevations, due to the narrow time window of occurrence in these areas (Nimmo et al. , Theimer et al. ).…”

Fire as a key driver of Earth's biodiversity

“…‘pyrophilous’ species; Table S2). Organisms that depend on fire‐disturbance for their long‐term survival may be regarded as adapted to fire‐prone habitats (Hutto et al, ; Pausas & Parr, ), although the evidence for unique fire adaptations in animals has rarely been explored (Nimmo et al, ). Recent studies (Stawski et al, , ; Matthews et al, ; Nowack et al, ) indicate that torpor (a state of decreased physiological activity) is used extensively among terrestrial mammals in Australia to deal with fires, or the scorched postfire environment, suggesting that fire may act as a signal, and leads to adaptive changes in animal behaviour and physiology.…”