Effect of fire on small mammals: a systematic review

By Anthony D. Griffiths, Barry W. Brook. 2014

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Fire is a natural disturbance that exerts an important influence on global ecosystems, affecting vegetation distribution and structure, the carbon cycle and climate. However, human-induced changes to fire regimes may affect at-risk species groups such as small mammals. We examine the effect of fire on small mammals and evaluate the relative sensitivity to fire among different groups using a systematic review methodology that included critiquing the literature with respect to survey design and statistical analysis. Overall, small mammal abundance is slightly higher, and demographic parameters more favourable, in unburnt sites compared to burnt sites. This was more pronounced in species with body size range of 101–1000g and with habitat requirements that are sensitive to fire (e.g. dense ground cover): in 66.6 and 69.7% of pairwise comparisons, abundance or a demographic parameter were higher in unburnt than burnt sites. This systematic review demonstrates that there remains a continued focus on simple shifts in abundance with regards to effect of fire and small mammals, which limits understanding of mechanisms responsible for change. Body size and habitat preference were most important in explaining variation in small mammal species’ responses to fire.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/34de13e2720242399a99066cc14371489f7b35e1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Fire frequency matters more than fire size: Testing the pyrodiversity-biodiversity paradigm for at-risk small mammals in an Australian tropical savanna (2015, background): “Data for four small mammal species from Kapalga, Kakadu National Park, were available to determine the effects of fire: northern brown bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus), brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula), northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus) and grassland melomys (Melomys burtoni) (Griffiths and ”
Stemming the tide: progress towards resolving the causes of decline and implementing management responses for the disappearing mammal fauna of northern Australia (2015, background): “A recent systematic review of the effects of fire on small mammals globally supports this, concluding that species dependent on firesensitive habitats (e.g. requiring dense ground vegetation) have higher abundances in unburnt sites (Griffiths and Brook 2014).”
Responses of invasive predators and native prey to a prescribed forest fire (2017, background): “…landscapes are well documented (e.g., Torre and Diaz 2004; Santos and Cheylan 2013; Swan et al. 2015), the mechanisms that underlie these relationships have rarely been quantified experimentally (Driscoll et al. 2010; Griffiths and Brook 2014; although see Zwolak et al. 2012; Leahy et al. 2015).”