Abstract
Altered fire regimes are a driver of biodiversity decline. To plan effective management, we need to know how species are influenced by fire and to develop theory describing fire responses. Animal responses to fire are usually measured using methods that rely on animal activity, but animal activity may vary with time since fire, potentially biasing results. Using a novel approach for detecting bias in the pit-fall trap method, we found that leaf-litter dependent reptiles were more active up to 6 weeks after fire, giving a misleading impression of abundance. This effect was not discovered when modelling detectability with zero-inflated binomial models. Two species without detection bias showed early-successional responses to time since fire, consistent with a habitat-accommodation succession model. However, a habitat specialist did not have the predicted low abundance after fire due to increased post-fire movement and non-linear recovery of a key habitat component. Interactions between fire and other processes therefore must be better understood to predict reptile responses to changing fire-regimes. We conclude that there is substantial bias when trapping reptiles after fire, with species that are otherwise hard to detect appearing to be abundant. Studies that use a survey method based on animal activity such as bird calls or animal movements, likely face a similar risk of bias when comparing recently-disturbed with control sites.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson DR (2003) Response to Engeman: index values rarely constitute reliable information. Wildl Soc Bull 31:288–291
Australian Native Vegetation Assessment (2001) Australian native vegetation assessment. National Land and Water Resources Audit and Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra
Barlow J, Peres CA (2004) Avifaunal responses to single and recurrent wildfires in Amazonian forests. Ecol Appl 14:1358–1373
Bates D, Maechler M, Bolker B (2011) lme4: linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes R package version 0.999375-39. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4
Benjamini Y, Hochberg Y (1995) Controlling the false discovery rate—a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. J R Stat Soc Ser B 57:289–300
Bradstock RA, Cohn JS (2002) Fire regimes and biodiversity in semi-arid mallee ecosystems. In: Bradstock RA, Williams JE, Gill AM (eds) Flammable Australia: the fire regimes and biodiversity of a continent. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 238–258
Bradstock RA, Tozer MG, Keith DA (1997) Effects of high frequency fire on floristic composition and abundance in a fire-prone heathland near Sydney. Aust J Bot 45:641–655
Bradstock RA, Bedward M, Kenny BJ, Scott J (1998) Spatially-explicit simulation of the effect of prescribed burning on fire regimes and plant extinctions in shrublands typical of south-eastern Australia. Biol Conserv 86:83–95
Bradstock RA, Bedward M, Gill AM, Cohn JS (2005) Which mosaic? A landscape ecological approach for evaluating interactions between fire regimes, habitat and animals. Wildl Res 32:409–423
Briani DC, Palma ART, Vieira EM, Henriques RPB (2004) Post-fire succession of small mammals in the Cerrado of central Brazil. Biodivers Conserv 13:1023–1037
Burgman MA, Keith D, Hopper SD, Widyatmoko D, Drill C (2007) Threat syndromes and conservation of the Australian flora. Biol Conserv 134:73–82
Burnham KP, Anderson D (2002) Model selection and multimodel inference. Springer-Verlag, New York
Calsbeek R (2009) Sex-specific adult dispersal and its selective consequences in the brown anole, Anolis sagrei. J Anim Ecol 78:617–624
Caughley J (1985) Effect of fire on the reptile fauna of mallee. In: Grigg G, Shine R, Ehmann H (eds) Biology of Australasian frogs and reptiles. Royal Zoological Society of NSW and Surrey Beatty & Sons, Chipping Norton, pp 31–34
Chelgren ND, Adams MJ, Bailey LL, Bury RB (2011) Using multilevel spatial models to understand salamander site occupancy patterns after wildfire. Ecology 92:408–421
Cleary DFR, Priadjati A, Suryokusumo BK, Menken SBJ (2006) Butterfly, seedling, sapling and tree diversity and composition in a fire-affected Bornean rainforest. Austral Ecol 31:46–57
Cogger HG (1996) Reptiles and amphibians of Australia, 5th edn. Reed, Port Melbourne
Cohn JS (1995) The vegetation of Nombinnie and Round Hill Nature Reserves, central-western New South Wales. Cunninghamia 4:81–101
Cohn JS, Bradstock RA (2000) Factors affecting post-fire seedling establishment of selected mallee understorey species. Aust J Bot 48:59–70
Craig MD, Grigg AH, Garkaklis MJ, Hobbs RJ, Grant CD, Fleming PA, Hardy G (2009) Does habitat structure influence capture probabilities? A study of reptiles in a eucalypt forest. Wildl Res 36:509–515
Cunningham RB, Lindenmayer DB, Nix HA, Lindenmayr BD (1999) Quantifying observer heterogeneity in bird counts. Aust J Ecol 24:270–277
Cunningham SC, Babb RD, Jones TR, Taubert BD, Vega R (2002) Reaction of lizard populations to a catastrophic wildfire in a central Arizona mountain range. Biol Conserv 107:193–201
DellaSala DA, Williams JE, Williams CD, Franklin JE (2004) Beyond smoke and mirrors: a synthesis of fire policy and science. Conserv Biol 18:976–986
Driscoll DA (1998) Counts of calling males as estimates of population size in the endangered frogs Geocrinia alba and G. vitellina. J Herpetol 32:475–481
Driscoll DA (2004) Extinction and outbreaks accompany fragmentation of a reptile community. Ecol Appl 14:220–240
Driscoll DA, Henderson MK (2008) How many common reptile species are fire specialists? A replicated natural experiment highlights the predictive weakness of a fire succession model. Biol Conserv 141:460–471
Driscoll DA, Roberts JD (1997) Impact of fuel reduction burning on the frog Geocrinia lutea in south-west Western Australia. Aust J Ecol 22:334–339
Driscoll DA, Lindenmayer DB, Bennett AF, Bode M, Bradstock RA, Cary GJ, Clarke MF, Dexter N, Fensham R, Friend G, Gill M, James S, Kay G, Keith DA, MacGregor C, Possingham HP, Russel-Smith J, Salt D, Watson JEM, Williams RJ, York A (2010a) Resolving conflicts in fire management using decision theory; asset-protection versus biodiversity conservation. Conserv Lett 3:215–223
Driscoll DA, Lindenmayer DB, Bennett AF, Bode M, Bradstock RA, Cary GJ, Clarke MF, Dexter N, Fensham R, Friend G, Gill M, James S, Kay G, Keith DA, MacGregor C, Russel-Smith J, Salt D, Watson JEM, Williams R, York A (2010b) Fire management for biodiversity conservation: key research questions and our capacity to answer them. Biol Conserv 143:1928–1939
Fattorini S (2010) Effects of fire on tenebrionid communities of a Pinus pinea plantation: a case study in a Mediterranean site. Biodivers Conserv 19:1237–1250
Fiske I, Chandler R, Royle A (2011) unmarked: Models for Data from Unmarked Animals. R package version 0.9-0. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=unmarked. Accessed June 2011
Flannigan M, Stocks B, Turetsky M, Wotton M (2009) Impacts of climate change on fire activity and fire management in the circumboreal forest. Global Change Biol 15:549–560
Fogarty JH, Jones JC (2003) Pitfall trap versus area searches for herpetofauna research. In: Proceedings of the fifty-seventh annual conference of the southeastern association of fish and wildlife agencies, pp 268–279
Ford WM, Rodrigue JL, Rowan EL, Castleberry SB, Schuler TM (2010) Woodland salamander response to two prescribed fires in the central Appalachians. For Ecol Manage 260:1003–1009
Fox BJ (1982) Fire and mammalian secondary succession in an Australian coastal heath. Ecology 63:1332–1341
Fox BJ, Taylor JE, Thompson PT (2003) Experimental manipulation of habitat structure: a retrogression of the small mammal succession. J Anim Ecol 72:927–940
Friend GR (1993) Impact of fire on small vertebrates in mallee woodlands and heathlands of temperate Australia: a review. Biol Conserv 65:99–114
Gandhi KJK, Spence JR, Langor DW, Morgantini LE (2001) Fire residuals as habitat reserves for epigaeic beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae and Staphylinidae). Biol Conserv 102:131–141
Gill AM, Williams JE (1996) Fire regimes and biodiversity: the effects of fragmentation of southeastern Australian eucalypt forests by urbanisation, agriculture and pine plantations. For Ecol Manage 85:261–278
Good P (1994) Permutation tests: a practical guide to resampling methods for testing hypotheses. Springer-Verlag, New York
Gray JB, Wentworth TR, Brownie C (2003) Extinction, colonization, and persistence of rare vascular flora in the longleaf pine-wiregrass ecosystem: responses to fire frequency and population size. Nat Areas J 23:210–219
Greenberg CH (2000) Fire, habitat structure and herpetofauna in the southeast. In: Ford WM, Russell KR, Moorman CE (eds) The role of fire in nongame wildlife management and community restoration: traditional uses and new directions. General technical report NE-GTR-288. Forest Service, Newton Square, Pennsylvania, pp 91–99
Greenberg CH, Waldrop TA (2008) Short-term response of reptiles and amphibians to prescribed fire and mechanical fuel reduction in a southern Appalachian upland hardwood forest. For Ecol Manage 255:2883–2893
Greenslade PJM (1964) Pitfall trapping as a method for studying populations of Carabidae (Coleoptera). J Anim Ecol 33:301–310
Hadfield J (2010) MCMC methods for multi-response generalized linear mixed models: The MCMCglmm R package. J Stat Softw 33:1–22
Haslem A, Kelly LT, Nimmo DG, Watson SJ, Kenny SA, Taylor RS, Avitabile SC, Callister KE, Spence-Bailey LM, Clarke MF, Bennett AF (2011) Habitat or fuel? Implications of long-term, post-fire dynamics for the development of key resources for fauna and fire. J Appl Ecol 48:247–256
Hobbs RJ (2003) How fire regimes interact with other forms of ecosystem disturbance and modification. In: Abbott I, Burrows N (eds) Fire in ecosystems of south-west Western Australia. Backhuys, Leiden, pp 421–436
Hurlbert SH (1984) Pseudoreplication and the design of ecological field experiments. Ecol Monogr 54:187–211
IPCC (2007) Climate change 2007. Synthesis report. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva
Irvin M, Westbrooke M, Gibson M (2003) Effects of repeated low-intensity fire on reptile populations of a mixed eucalypt foothill forest in south-eastern Australia, research report no. 65. Department of Sustainability and Environment, Melbourne
James CD (1994) Spatial and temporal variation in structure of a diverse lizard assemblage in arid Australia. In: Vitt LJ, Pianka ER (eds) Lizard ecology historical and experimental perspectives. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp 287–317
Kilpatrick ES, Waldrop TA, Lanham JD, Greenberg CH, Contreras TH (2010) Short-term effects of fuel reduction treatments on herpetofauna from the Southeastern United States. For Sci 56:122–130
Koivula M, Kotze DJ, Hiisivuori L, Rita H (2003) Pitfall trap efficiency: do trap size, collecting fluid and vegetation structure matter? Entomol Fenn 14:1–14
Legge S, Murphy S, Heathcote J, Flaxman E, Augusteyn J, Crossman M (2008) The short-term effects of an extensive and high-intensity fire on vertebrates in the tropical savannas of the central Kimberley, northern Australia. Wildl Res 35:33–43
Letnic M, Dickman CR, Tischler MK, Tamayo B, Beh CL (2004) The responses of small mammals and lizards to post-fire succession and rainfall in arid Australia. J Arid Environ 59:85–114
Letnic M, Tamayo B, Dickman CR (2005) The responses of mammals to La Nina (El Nino Southern Oscillation)-associated rainfall, predation, and wildfire in central Australia. J Mammal 86:689–703
Lindenmayer DB, MacGregor C, Welsh A, Donnelly C, Crane M, Michael D, Montague-Drake R, Cunningham RB, Brown D, Fortescue M, Dexter N, Hudson M, Gill AM (2008a) Contrasting mammal responses to vegetation type and fire. Wildl Res 35:395–408
Lindenmayer DB, Wood JT, Michael D, MacGregor C, Cunningham RB, Crane M, Montague-Drake R, Brown D, Muntz R, Gill AM, Driscoll DA (2008b) How predictable are reptile responses to wildfire? Oikos 117:1086–1097
Louzada J, Lima AP, Matavelli R, Zambaldi L, Barlow J (2010) Community structure of dung beetles in Amazonian savannas: role of fire disturbance, vegetation and landscape structure. Landsc Ecol 25:631–641
Lyon JP, O’Connor JP (2008) Smoke on the water: can riverine fish populations recover following a catastrophic fire-related sediment slug? Austral Ecol 33:794–806
MacKenzie D, Nichols J, Royle J, Pollock K, Bailey L, Hines J (2006) Occupancy estimation and modeling: inferring patterns and dynamics of species occurrence. Elsevier Academic Press, Burlington
Madden EM, Hansen AJ, Murphy RK (1999) Influence of prescribed fire history on habitat and abundance of passerine birds in northern mixed-grass prairie. Can Field Nat 113:627–640
Maindonald J, Braun J (2010) Data analysis and graphics using R. An example-based approach, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Masters P (1996) The effects of fire-driven succession on reptiles in spinifex grasslands at Uluru National Park, northern territory. Wildl Res 23:39–48
Matthews CE, Moorman CE, Greenberg CH, Waldrop TA (2010) Response of reptiles and amphibians to repeated fuel reduction treatments. J Wildl Manage 74:1301–1310
Melbourne BA (1999) Bias in the effect of habitat structure on pitfall traps: an experimental evaluation. Aust J Ecol 24:228–239
Menges ES, Ascencio PFQ, Weekley CW, Gaoue OG (2006) Population viability analysis and fire return intervals for an endemic Florida scrub mint. Biol Conserv 127:115–127
Morrison DA, Buckney RT, Bewick BJ, Cary GJ (1996) Conservation conflicts over burning bush in south-eastern Australia. Biol Conserv 76:167–175
Naef-Daenzer B, Fruh D, Stalder M, Wetli P, Weise E (2005) Miniaturization (0.2 g) and evaluation of attachment techniques of telemetry transmitters. J Exp Biol 208:4063–4068
Odion D, Tyler C (2002) Are long fire-free periods needed to maintain the endangered, fire-recruiting shrub Arctostaphylos morroensis (Ericaceae)? Conserv Ecol 6:4
Olsson M, Wapstra E, Swan G, Snaith E, Clarke R, Madsen T (2005) Effects of long-term fox baiting on species composition and abundance in an Australian lizard community. Austral Ecol 30:907–913
Ostoja SM, Schupp EW (2009) Conversion of sagebrush shrublands to exotic annual grasslands negatively impacts small mammal communities. Divers Distrib 15:863–870
Parr CL, Andersen AN (2006) Patch mosaic burning for biodiversity conservation: a critique of the pyrodiversity paradigm. Conserv Biol 20:1610–1619
Perry RW, Rudolph DC, Thill RE (2009) Reptile and amphibian responses to restoration of fire-maintained pine woodlands. Restor Ecol 17:917–927
Pianka ER (1969) Habitat specificity, speciation, and species density in Australian desert lizards. Ecology 50:498–502
Pianka ER (1996) Long-term changes in the lizard assemblages in the Great Victoria Desert. In: Cody ML, Smallwood JA (eds) Long-term studies of vertebrate communities. Academic Press, San Diego, pp 191–216
Pons P, Clavero M (2010) Bird responses to fire severity and time since fire in managed mountain rangelands. Anim Conserv 13:294–305
R Development Core Team (2011) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Version 2.13.0. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna. ISBN 3-900051-07-0. http://www.R-project.org. Accessed Nov 2010
Regan HM, Auld TD, Keith DA, Burgman MA (2003) The effects of fire and predators on the long-term persistence of an endangered shrub, Grevillea caleyi. Biol Conserv 109:73–83
Rice B, Westoby M (1999) Regeneration after fire in Triodia R. Br. Aust J Ecol 24:563–572
Richards SA, Possingham HP, Tizard J (1999) Optimal fire management for maintaining community diversity. Ecol Appl 9:880–892
Robinson AC, Heard LMB (1985) National parks. In: Twidale CR, Tyler MJ, Davies M (eds) Natural history of Eyre Peninsula. Royal Society of South Australia, Adelaide, pp 201–223
Santos X, Poquet JM (2010) Ecological succession and habitat attributes affect the postfire response of a Mediterranean reptile community. Eur J Wildl Res 56:895–905
Schlesinger CA (2007) Does vegetation cover affect the rate of capture of ground-active lizards in pitfall traps? Wildl Res 34:359–365
Schutz AJ, Driscoll DA (2008) Common reptiles unaffected by connectivity or condition in a fragmented farming landscape. Austral Ecol 33:641–652
Schweiger EW, Diffendorfer JE, Holt RD, Pierotti R, Gaines MS (2000) The interaction of habitat fragmentation plant, and small mammal succession in an old field. Ecol Monogr 70:383–400
Schwerdtfeger P (1985) Climate. In: Twidale CR, Tyler MJ, Davies M (eds) Natural history of Eyre Peninsula. Royal Society of South Australia, Adelaide, pp 89–104
Smith A, Driscoll DA, Bull CM (2012) Post-fire succession affects abundance and survival but not detectability in a knob-tailed gecko. Biol Conserv 145:139–147
Specht RL (1971) The vegetation of South Australia. British Science Guild Handbooks Committee, Adelaide
State of the Environment Report (2003) State of the environment report. Supplementary report. Government of South Australia, Adelaide
Todd BD, Andrews KM (2008) Response of a reptile guild to forest harvesting. Conserv Biol 22:753–761
Twidale CR, Campbell EM (1985) The form of the land surface. In: Twidale CR, Tyler MJ, Davies M (eds) Natural history of Eyre Peninsula. Royal Society of South Australia, Adelaide
Underwood EC, Viers JH, Klausmeyer KR, Cox RL, Shaw MR (2009) Threats and biodiversity in the mediterranean biome. Divers Distrib 15:188–197
Valentine LE, Schwarzkopf L (2009) Effects of weed-management burning on reptile assemblages in Australian tropical savannas. Conserv Biol 23:103–113
van Wilgen BW, Forsyth GG, de Klerk H, Das S, Khuluse S, Schmitz P (2010) Fire management in Mediterranean-climate shrublands: a case study from the Cape fynbos, South Africa. J Appl Ecol 47:631–638
Warner DA, Shine R (2008) Determinants of dispersal distance in free-ranging juvenile lizards. Ethology 114:361–368
Westerling AL, Hidalgo HG, Cayan DR, Swetnam TW (2006) Warming and earlier spring increase western US forest wildfire activity. Science 313:940–943
Williams JR, Driscoll DA, Bull CM (2011) Dispersal and isolation affect structure of vertebrate communities in a fragmented landscape. Austral Ecol. doi:10.1111/j.1442-9993.2011.02292.x
Wilson S, Swan G (2003) A complete guide to reptiles of Australia. Reed New Holland, Sydney
Woinarski JCZ, Fisher A, Milne D (1999) Distribution patterns of vertebrates in relation to an extensive rainfall gradient and variation in soil texture in the tropical savannas of the Northern Territory, Australia. J Trop Ecol 15:381–398
Yarnell RW, Scott DM, Chimimba CT, Metcalfe DJ (2007) Untangling the roles of fire, grazing and rainfall on small mammal communities in grassland ecosystems. Oecologia 154:387–402
Acknowledgments
We are extremely grateful for the assistance provided by Joe Tilley DENR SA and fire crews who completed the planned burns. We thank Meredith Henderson for access to maps and support throughout the project. Thanks to DENR Port Augusta who provided field communications. The field work was completed with the assistance of L. Ahrendt, Z. Auburn, B. Bader, D. Barry, J. Bilney, S. Burgess, C. Cameron, A. Castañeda, N. Coggan, J. Crierie, D. Cunningham, S. Dalgairns, S. Dardanelli, N. Diaz, E. Dix, M. Doughty, R. Dudaniec, T. Egan, C. Element, T. Forrest, D. Frahm, M. Harris, E. Hoffman, T. Smith-Harding, C. Jeong, S. Johnson, H. Jung, J. Kirkby, T. Klinger, L. Kyriacou, S. Lath, W. Lawrence, C. Lawson, C. Li, C. Lovegrove, K. Marten, R. McGuiness, A. McGuire, W. McLachlan, V. Meyer, M. Mihailova, A. Mogoutnov, B. Muelders, A. Murphy, A. Nedosyko, K. Pelgrim, A. Quarmby, T. Rawson, A. Seidel, R. Shannon, D. Sortino, S. South, K. Tiitsaar, A. Treils, A. Waller, S. Way, M. Westgate, H. Westgate, J. Williams, N. Yazdani. The project was funded by the Department for Environment and Heritage, South Australia, Flinders University and the Australia and Pacific Science Foundation. Write up was completed with funding from the Applied Environmental Decision Analysis Commonwealth Environment Research Facility. Animals were handled under permit E194 of the Flinders University Animal Welfare committee, and DENR SA permit to undertake scientific research Q24788.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Driscoll, D.A., Smith, A.L., Blight, S. et al. Reptile responses to fire and the risk of post-disturbance sampling bias. Biodivers Conserv 21, 1607–1625 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-012-0267-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-012-0267-5