Fire affects the occurrence of small mammals at distinct spatial scales in a neotropical savanna

Camargo, Anna Carla L.; Barrio, Rafaela Oliveira Llorente; Camargo, Nícholas F. de; Mendonça, André Faria; Ribeiro, Juliana Fernandes; Rodrigues, Camila Moniz Freire; Vieira, Emerson M.

doi:10.1007/s10344-018-1224-8

Cited by 27 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…For instance, studies at both local and regional scales have shown that small mammals are composed of savanna specialists and forest dwellers at roughly similar proportions, with few generalist species (Carmignotto et al, 2012(Carmignotto et al, , 2014. Since fire alters vegetation structure, in the sense of reducing arboreal biomass and increasing herbaceous layer, these changes directly affect the small mammals, favoring open habitat dwellers and consequently decreasing forest specialists in burned areas (Henriques et al, 2006;Camargo et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although fire effects on Cerrado biodiversity have deserved attention in the last decades (e.g., Sato and Miranda, 1996;Cavalcanti and Alves, 1997;Briani et al, 2004;Cintra and Sanaiotti, 2005;Costa et al, 2013;Maravalhas and Vasconcelos, 2014;Camargo et al, 2018;Mendonça et al, 2015a), the few available studies are unevenly distributed in space and concentrated in the core area of the biome, hindering generalizations, and predictions valid for the whole range of environmental conditions within the Cerrado (Arruda et al, 2018). Additionally, most studies were carried out after unplanned wildfires, not comparing burned and unburned sites or periods before and after fire, thus not allowing conclusions about biodiversity losses due to fire.…”

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confidence: 99%

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No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna

Durigan

Pilon

Abreu

et al. 2020

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Although savannas are fire-adapted ecosystems, prescribing fire for biodiversity conservation remains controversial at least in some regions where savannas occur. Faced with uncertainty, many decision makers and even scientists are still reluctant to prescribe fire for conservation purposes in fire-prone ecosystems, invoking the precautionary principle. Knowledge gaps on the ideal fire regime, such as how and when to burn, and especially the fear of biodiversity losses, are among the main arguments against fire management applied to remnants of native savanna vegetation. To inform this debate, we assessed the impact of prescribed fires on diversity of plants (different growth forms), ants, frogs, lizards, birds, and small mammals, in savannas and grasslands of the Brazilian Cerrado. We assessed the existing species richness, composition, and abundance in areas subjected to long periods of fire suppression and compared to that observed over a short period after prescribed dry-season fires, within each group of plants and animals. Whenever possible, we carried out separate analyses for grassland and savanna. Burning did not significantly reduce species richness of any of the groups analyzed, but had a positive effect on richness of graminoids in grassland. When analyzed at the species level, abundance of most animal groups did not show consistent responses to fire, except for a decrease in some frog populations in grasslands. Forbs, graminoids, and subshrubs increased in abundance after fire in grassland areas, though in savanna areas, abundance of forbs, and subshrubs tended to decline after fire. Species composition changed little in response to fire as indicated by low levels of dissimilarity between burned and unburned areas. These results confirm the high resilience of Cerrado biota to fire, as expected for savanna ecosystems in general. Besides, we demonstrate here that the risk of biodiversity losses cannot justify the objections to the use of prescribed fire for conservation purposes in the Cerrado.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna

Durigan

Pilon

Abreu

et al. 2020

Front. For. Glob. Change

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“…For the evaluation of habitat structure, each capture station was divided into four quadrants and the measurements were taken: (a) understory obstruction at 1.5 m height, which was estimated using a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) square of 0.25 m 2 (0.50 × 0.50 m) divided into 50 open squares with a nylon mesh (see Freitas, Cerqueira, & Vieira, for more details); (b) herbaceous obstruction also measured with the same PVC square; (c) percentage of canopy openness measured with a concave densitometer positioned at 1.5 m height (Lemmon, ); (d) canopy connectivity (Freitas et al, ); (e) litter depth using a measuring tape; (f) diameter at breast height (dbh) of the nearest tree with minimum diameter of 16 cm; (g) distance to the nearest tree with dbh >16 cm; and (h) height of the nearest tree with dbh >16 cm. These microhabitat variables are potentially relevant for the occurrence of small mammals (Camargo et al, ; Mendonça et al, ) and also describe heterogeneity and complexity variation of the habitat. For each variable, we calculated the average value considering all the measurements obtained in the four quadrants.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(d) canopy connectivity (Freitas et al, 2002); (e) litter depth using a measuring tape; (f) diameter at breast height (dbh) of the nearest tree with minimum diameter of 16 cm; (g) distance to the nearest tree with dbh >16 cm; and (h) height of the nearest tree with dbh >16 cm. These microhabitat variables are potentially relevant for the occurrence of small mammals (Camargo et al, 2018;Mendonça et al, 2015) and also describe heterogeneity and complexity variation of the habitat. For each variable, we calculated the average value considering all the measurements obtained in the four quadrants.…”

Section: Measurements Of Habitat Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Availability of food resources and habitat structure shape the individual‐resource network of a Neotropical marsupial

Camargo

Oliveira

Ribeiro

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Spatial and temporal variation in networks has been reported in different studies. However, the many effects of habitat structure and food resource availability variation on network structures have remained poorly investigated, especially in individual‐based networks. This approach can shed light on individual specialization of resource use and how habitat variations shape trophic interactions. To test hypotheses related to habitat variability on trophic interactions, we investigated seasonal and spatial variation in network structure of four populations of the marsupial Gracilinanus agilis in the highly seasonal tropical savannas of the Brazilian Cerrado. We evaluated such variation with network nestedness and modularity considering both cool‐dry and warm‐wet seasons, and related such variations with food resource availability and habitat structure (considered in the present study as environmental variation) in four sites of savanna woodland forest. Network analyses showed that modularity (but not nestedness) was consistently lower during the cool‐dry season in all G. agilis populations. Our results indicated that nestedness is related to habitat structure, showing that this metric increases in sites with thick and spaced trees. On the other hand, modularity was positively related to diversity of arthropods and abundance of fruits. We propose that the relationship between nestedness and habitat structure is an outcome of individual variation in the vertical space and food resource use by G. agilis in sites with thick and spaced trees. Moreover, individual specialization in resource‐rich and population‐dense periods possibly increased the network modularity of G. agilis . Therefore, our study reveals that environment variability considering spatial and temporal components is important for shaping network structure of populations.

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“…2015; Camargo et al . 2018). On the other hand, the lack of statistical significance when comparing unburned and low‐severity stands suggest that a low fire intensity does not unduly affect the supply of resources provided by the tissues, seeds or insects associated with annual plants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rodent assemblage composition as indicator of fire severity in a protected area of south‐central Chile

et al. 2020

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Fires have a considerable impact on biological communities and ecosystems, within which the assessment of burned habitats requires consideration of indicator species or assemblages useful for monitoring. The short‐term effects of fires can be easily deduced from analysing assemblages of animals with short generation times and high fertility rates, such as rodents. Here, we evaluated the effect of fire severity in a protected area of southern Chile on abundance, composition and diversity of rodent assemblages. We sampled rodents and vegetation variables during summer and fall over two years (2017 and 2018) in forest stands with different levels of fire severity (high, low and unburned stands). Changes in diversity and abundance were found between unburned and burned stands, with these differences being more noticeable during the fall of the first year. Abundances of rodent species exhibited marked fluctuations over the study period, but two species consistently decreased their abundances as fire severity increased, and with the absence of one species in burned stands. The adverse fire effects were less evident during the second year due to the overall low capture rates (1.3–1.9%). Rodent species were differently affected by fire, with Irenomys tarsalis (arboreal rat) being the species most sensitive to fires. The effect of fire severity on abundance of rodent species was associated with changes in the vegetation variables, where dead wood, canopy and herb cover showed a low correlation (R = 0.147). Our results suggest that fires of high severity cause important disturbances on habitat and food resources that result in short‐term effects on the rodent assemblage. Fires apparently act as an ecological filter for the more specialised species while offering an opportunity for the settlement of generalist species. Hence, the monitoring of rodent species differing in their ecological traits, such as food habits and space use, offers an opportunity for assessing the short‐term recovery patterns of wildlife after fire disturbances.

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Fire affects the occurrence of small mammals at distinct spatial scales in a neotropical savanna

Cited by 27 publications

References 68 publications

No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna

No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna

Availability of food resources and habitat structure shape the individual‐resource network of a Neotropical marsupial

Rodent assemblage composition as indicator of fire severity in a protected area of south‐central Chile

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