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Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest
Fire and herbivores alter vegetation structure and function. Future fire activity is predicted to increase, and quantifying changes in vegetation communities arising from post‐fire herbivory is needed to better manage natural environments. We investigated the effects of post‐fire herbivory on unders...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9034452/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35475176 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8828 |
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author | Chard, Matthew Foster, Claire N. Lindenmayer, David B. Cary, Geoffrey J. MacGregor, Christopher I. Blanchard, Wade |
author_facet | Chard, Matthew Foster, Claire N. Lindenmayer, David B. Cary, Geoffrey J. MacGregor, Christopher I. Blanchard, Wade |
author_sort | Chard, Matthew |
collection | PubMed |
description | Fire and herbivores alter vegetation structure and function. Future fire activity is predicted to increase, and quantifying changes in vegetation communities arising from post‐fire herbivory is needed to better manage natural environments. We investigated the effects of post‐fire herbivory on understory plant communities in a coastal eucalypt forest in southeastern Australia. We quantified herbivore activity, understory plant diversity, and dominant plant morphology following a wildfire in 2017 using two sizes of exclosures. Statistical analysis incorporated the effect of exclusion treatments, time since fire, and the effect of a previous prescribed burn. Exclusion treatments altered herbivore activity, but time since fire did not. Herbivory reduced plant species richness, diversity, and evenness and promoted the dominance of the most abundant plants within the understory. Increasing time since fire reduced community diversity and evenness and influenced morphological changes to the dominant understory plant species, increasing size and dead material while decreasing abundance. We found the legacy effects of a previous prescribed burn had no effect on herbivores or vegetation within our study. Foraging by large herbivores resulted in a depauperate vegetation community. As post‐fire herbivory can alter vegetation communities, we postulate that management burning practices may exacerbate herbivore impacts. Future fire management strategies to minimize herbivore‐mediated alterations to understory vegetation could include aggregating management burns into larger fire sizes or linking fire management with herbivore management. Restricting herbivore access following fire (planned or otherwise) can encourage a more diverse and species‐rich understory plant community. Future research should aim to determine how vegetation change from post‐fire herbivory contributes to future fire risk. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9034452 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90344522022-04-25 Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest Chard, Matthew Foster, Claire N. Lindenmayer, David B. Cary, Geoffrey J. MacGregor, Christopher I. Blanchard, Wade Ecol Evol Research Articles Fire and herbivores alter vegetation structure and function. Future fire activity is predicted to increase, and quantifying changes in vegetation communities arising from post‐fire herbivory is needed to better manage natural environments. We investigated the effects of post‐fire herbivory on understory plant communities in a coastal eucalypt forest in southeastern Australia. We quantified herbivore activity, understory plant diversity, and dominant plant morphology following a wildfire in 2017 using two sizes of exclosures. Statistical analysis incorporated the effect of exclusion treatments, time since fire, and the effect of a previous prescribed burn. Exclusion treatments altered herbivore activity, but time since fire did not. Herbivory reduced plant species richness, diversity, and evenness and promoted the dominance of the most abundant plants within the understory. Increasing time since fire reduced community diversity and evenness and influenced morphological changes to the dominant understory plant species, increasing size and dead material while decreasing abundance. We found the legacy effects of a previous prescribed burn had no effect on herbivores or vegetation within our study. Foraging by large herbivores resulted in a depauperate vegetation community. As post‐fire herbivory can alter vegetation communities, we postulate that management burning practices may exacerbate herbivore impacts. Future fire management strategies to minimize herbivore‐mediated alterations to understory vegetation could include aggregating management burns into larger fire sizes or linking fire management with herbivore management. Restricting herbivore access following fire (planned or otherwise) can encourage a more diverse and species‐rich understory plant community. Future research should aim to determine how vegetation change from post‐fire herbivory contributes to future fire risk. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9034452/ /pubmed/35475176 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8828 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Chard, Matthew Foster, Claire N. Lindenmayer, David B. Cary, Geoffrey J. MacGregor, Christopher I. Blanchard, Wade Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
title | Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
title_full | Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
title_fullStr | Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
title_full_unstemmed | Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
title_short | Post‐fire pickings: Large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
title_sort | post‐fire pickings: large herbivores alter understory vegetation communities in a coastal eucalypt forest |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9034452/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35475176 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8828 |
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