Bridging the Divide: Integrating Animal and Plant Paradigms to Secure the Future of Biodiversity in Fire-Prone Ecosystems

Abstract

Conserving animals and plants in fire-prone landscapes requires evidence of how fires affect modified ecosystems. Despite progress on this front, fire ecology is restricted by a dissonance between two dominant paradigms: 'fire mosaics' and 'functional types'. The fire mosaic paradigm focuses on animal responses to fire events and spatial variation, whereas the functional type paradigm focuses on plant responses to recurrent fires and temporal variation. Fire management for biodiversity conservation requires input from each paradigm because animals and plants are interdependent and influenced by spatial and temporal dimensions of fire regimes. We propose that better integration of animal-based and plant-based approaches can be achieved by identifying common metrics that describe changes in multiple taxa; linking multiple components of the fire regime with animal and plant data; understanding plant-animal interactions; and incorporating spatial and temporal characteristics of fires into conservation management. Our vision for a more integrated fire ecology could be implemented via a collaborative and global network of research and monitoring sites, where measures of animals and plants are linked to real-time data on fire regimes.

A global synthesis of fire effects on pollinators

“…Therefore, pollinators are likely to depend on the different components of fire regime like the frequency of fires (Lazarina et al, ; Moretti, Obrist, & Duelli, ), the time since fire (Brown, York, Christie, & McCarthy, ; Potts et al, ; Swengel & Swengel, ) and the spatial variability of these parameters (Brown, York, & Christie, ; Ponisio et al, ). Understanding how fire regime factors affect pollinators is critical for planning conservation and management actions in the context of the Anthropocene (Dirzo et al, ; Kelly et al, ).…”

“…Pollinators may vary in their susceptibility to fire, depending on certain traits such as the degree of mobility, sociality, nesting behaviour and feeding habits (Kelly et al, ; Kral et al, ; Pausas, ). Many pollinators are good flyers and thus likely to recolonize or to forage in the burn area quickly as flowers are available (Carbone & Aguilar, ; García et al, ; Peralta et al, ; Thom, Daniels, Kobziar, & Colburn, ).…”

“…In addition, ground‐nesting pollinators that survived the fire, as well as those with social organization may be benefited in burned environments due to lower competition for floral resources and lower predation levels (Koltz et al, ; Kral et al, ; Pausas & Parr, ). Moreover, pollinators with generalist feeding habits tend to recolonize burned sites faster than pollinator specialists, as the latter need specific floral resources that may not be readily available in postfire communities (García et al, ; García et al, ; Geerts, Malherbe, & Pauw, ; Kelly et al, ).…”

“…Understanding how fire regime factors affect pollinators is critical for planning conservation and management actions in the context of the Anthropocene (Dirzo et al, 2014;Kelly et al, 2018).…”

Contemporary Fire Regimes Provide a Critical Perspective on Restoration Needs in the Mexico-United States Borderlands

“…5 Within the context of restoration, information on timing and spatial patterns of fire and its effects on plants and animals can be integrated with conservation. 3 Importantly, the considerable knowledge and experience of traditional practitioners in the region could contribute significantly to meeting the challenges of designing and conducting vegetation treatments, prescribed burns, or managed wildfire necessary for restoration. [12][13][14] Restoring natural fire regimes at landscape scales in the United States-Mexico borderlands, however, is complicated by several factors.…”