Heaton, D.J.; McHenry, M.T.; Kirkpatrick, J.B. The Fire and Fodder Reversal Phenomenon: Vertebrate Herbivore Activity in Burned and Unburned Tasmanian Ecosystems. Fire2022, 5, 111.
Heaton, D.J.; McHenry, M.T.; Kirkpatrick, J.B. The Fire and Fodder Reversal Phenomenon: Vertebrate Herbivore Activity in Burned and Unburned Tasmanian Ecosystems. Fire 2022, 5, 111.
Heaton, D.J.; McHenry, M.T.; Kirkpatrick, J.B. The Fire and Fodder Reversal Phenomenon: Vertebrate Herbivore Activity in Burned and Unburned Tasmanian Ecosystems. Fire2022, 5, 111.
Heaton, D.J.; McHenry, M.T.; Kirkpatrick, J.B. The Fire and Fodder Reversal Phenomenon: Vertebrate Herbivore Activity in Burned and Unburned Tasmanian Ecosystems. Fire 2022, 5, 111.
Abstract
Very few multi-species or ecosystem comparisons of post-fire vertebrate herbivore activity and food preference exist to inform fire-management and conservation strategies. We inferred post-fire (1-3 years) native and introduced vertebrate herbivore activity and attraction to six diverse temperate vegetation communities (grassland to rainforest) from scat counts. We hypothesised that where fire reduced herbaceous and grassy vegetation (‘fodder’), vertebrate herbivores would decline, and that post-fire preferences of native versus exotic herbivores would differ significantly. Instead, we found evidence for a ‘fire and fodder reversal phenomenon’ whereby native macropod and exotic rabbit scats were more abundant after fire in consistently ‘fodder-poor’ vegetation types (e.g wet forests) but more less abundant after fire in previously fodder-rich vegetation communities (e.g. grassland). Fodder cover predicted native macropod, wombat, and introduced deer activity and bareground cover was strongly associated with introduced herbivore activity only, with the latter indicating post-fire competition for food sources due to their abundance in high altitude open ecosystems. We therefore found environmental and vegetation predictors for each individual species/group and suggest broadscale multi-environment, multispecies observations to be informative for conservation management in potentially overlapping post-fire niches.
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
