The effects of fire on avian communities: spatio-temporal attributes of the literature 1912 - 2003

Abstract

We reviewed the temporal, geographic, and biogeographic distribution, as well as relevant research and publication attributes, of 512 documents addressing the effects of fire on avian communities, to provide an assessment of the scope of this literature and recommendations for future research. We summarized relevant attributes of all documents to identify patterns that were then tested against appropriate null models. Most documents reported on original research, with the literature evenly divided between studies investigating controlled fire and those reporting on uncontrolled wildfires. Conceptual reviews made up the second largest category; methodological reviews, bibliographies, and meta-analyses were rare. Although the literature examined spans nearly a century, most documents were published within the last 15 years, with new literature being added at an increasing rate. However, increases seem to be skewed towards original research at the expense of synthesis. An overwhelming majority of documents were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and in English. Other important publication outlets included MS and PhD theses and conference proceedings. The spatial distribution of documents by continent and biogeographic domain and division differed significantly from expectations based on land area. Future research on avian community response to fire should focus on (1) continued synthesis, emphasizing methodological reviews, bibliographies, and North America; (2) increasing research efforts in areas currently underrepresented in the literature, including Africa, Asia, and South and Central America; and (3) meta-analyses.

Meta-analysis of avian and small-mammal response to fire severity and fire surrogate treatments in U.S. fire-prone forests

“…Key words used in our searches, conducted in 2008, included fire, fire surrogate, prescribed fire, wildfire, mammal, bird, avian, reptile, amphibian, as well as common names of certain taxonomic groups (e.g., salamander) and rare species of management interest (e.g., Red-cockaded Woodpecker; see Appendix A for scientific names of all vertebrates included in our quantitative analysis). To augment our search, we also examined the literature cited sections from recent review articles (e.g., Russell et al 1999, Smith 2000, Kotliar et al 2002, Saab and Powell 2005, Pilliod et al 2006, Leidolf and Bissonette 2009 and all publications currently available from the FFS study (McIver et al 2008). We limited our search to peerreviewed or peer-edited publications such as journals and government technical reports dealing with vertebrate response to fire or fire surrogate treatments.…”

“…Parenthetical numbers indicate studies contributed from the Fire and Fire Surrogate study (described in McIver et al [2008]). Leidolf and Bissonette 2009), is a better understanding of fire and fire surrogate effects across a range of intensities and time scales. Based on the characteristics of the available literature, we created eight categories into which we pooled all observations: low-and moderate-severity fire (0-4 years postfire, 5-9 years postfire, .10 years postfire), high-severity fire (0-4 years postfire, 5-9 years postfire, .10 years postfire), thinning (0-4 years posttreatment), and thinning plus fire (0-4 years posttreatment).…”

“…Much of this is due to the difficulty of studying fire-wildlife interactions; consequently, a great deal of the literature is based upon convenience sampling of wildfires that burned preexisting sample points (e.g., Smucker et al 2005, Hossack and Corn 2007, Kotliar et al 2007. Reviewing global fire literature on the birds, the best-studied vertebrate taxon, Leidolf and Bissonette (2009) found just over 500 documents, of which ,50% were journal articles containing original research and of which .50% had been published since 1990. Of the avian-fire literature, North America accounted for nearly 60% of publications (Leidolf and Bissonette 2009).…”

“…Reviewing global fire literature on the birds, the best-studied vertebrate taxon, Leidolf and Bissonette (2009) found just over 500 documents, of which ,50% were journal articles containing original research and of which .50% had been published since 1990. Of the avian-fire literature, North America accounted for nearly 60% of publications (Leidolf and Bissonette 2009). Literature examining the effects of fire on other North American vertebrate taxa (small mammals, herpetofauna, and so forth) is far more sparse (Kennedy and Fontaine 2009).…”

Great tit (Parus major) breeding in fire-prone oak woods: differential effects of post-fire conditions on reproductive stages

“…In general, studies have focussed only on specialist species with conservation status of concern (Vierling and Lentile 2006;La Puma et al 2007), which may result in a lack of a holistic judgement for understanding the effects of fire on avian communities (Leidolf and Bissonette 2009). Generalist species also play an important role in the avian community.…”