The effect of fire on the structure of animal metacommunities in a Cerrado landscape: A 10-year survey of anurans, birds and moth assemblages

Abstract

We investigated the impact of a human-caused fire on four animal communities (birds, moths, and adults and larvae of anurans) within Emas National Park, Brazil, over a 10-year period. We compared community descriptors (mean abundance, species richness, and beta diversity) before and after the fire using an interrupted time series regression model. We found a significant impact of fire on the avian community, with all measured descriptors indicated a process of biotic homogenization, that is, a reduction in beta diversity, suggesting that sampled sites become more similar in species composition, and a decline in species richness that indicates dominance by a few bird species. Conversely, the fire’s effect on moth and anuran communities appeared less pronounced, while the abundance and species richness in tadpole communities were increasing over time, different of the response of adult anuran communities, that randomly oscillated over time. At first, we expected that moths would be more vulnerable to fire than birds, since moths have lower dispersal ability than birds, with anuran communities less affected, although we were not able to identify the causes that make avian communities more vulnerable than the moth and anuran communities. We suggest that the lack of nearby refuges and larger home range requirements may be the key factors in understanding avian vulnerability to catastrophic fire events.