title: Pyrodiversity promotes avian diversity over the decade following forest fire.
abstract: An emerging hypothesis in fire ecology is that pyrodiversity increases species diversity. We test whether pyrodiversity-defined as the standard deviation of fire severity-increases avian biodiversity at two spatial scales, and whether and how this relationship may change in the decade following fire. We use a dynamic Bayesian community model applied to a multi-year dataset of bird surveys at 1106 points sampled across 97 fires in montane California. Our results provide strong support for a positive relationship between pyrodiversity and bird diversity. This relationship interacts with time since fire, with pyrodiversity having a greater effect on biodiversity at 10 years post-fire than at 1 year post-fire. Immediately after fires, patches of differing burn severities hold similar bird communities, but over the ensuing decade, bird assemblages within patches of contrasting severities differentiate. When evaluated at the scale of individual fires, fires with a greater heterogeneity of burn severities hold substantially more species. High spatial heterogeneity in severity, sometimes called 'mixed-severity fire', is a natural part of wildfire regimes in western North America, but may be jeopardized by climate change and a legacy of fire suppression. Forest management that encourages mixed-severity fire may be critical for sustaining biodiversity across fire-prone landscapes.
authors.affiliation: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, 75 North Eagleville Road, Unit 3043, Storrs, CT 06269, USA The Institute for Bird Populations, PO Box 1346, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956, USA morgan.tingley@uconn.edu.
authors.forename: Morgan W
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1477-2218
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Tingley
authors.affiliation: Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
authors.forename: Viviana
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ruiz-Gutiérrez
authors.affiliation: The Institute for Bird Populations, PO Box 1346, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956, USA.
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Wilkerson
authors.affiliation: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, 1323 Club Drive, Vallejo, CA 94592, USA USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, 800 Buchanan Street, Albany, CA 94710, USA.
authors.forename: Christine A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Howell
authors.affiliation: The Institute for Bird Populations, PO Box 1346, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956, USA.
authors.forename: Rodney B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Siegel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D044822:Biodiversity; D001717:Birds / Q000145:classification*; D002140:California; D057231:Climate Change; D005390:Fires; D065928:Forests
keywords: bird diversity; hierarchical Bayesian; mixed-severity fire; occupancy; post-fire ecosystems; time since fire