Fire positively and negatively affects food webs across all trophic levels and guilds and influences a range of ecological processes that reinforce fire regimes, such as nutrient cycling and soil development, plant regeneration and growth, plant community assembly and dynamics, herbivory and predation. Thus we argue that rather than merely describing spatio-temporal patterns of fire regimes, pyrodiversity must be understood in terms of feedbacks between fire regimes, biodiversity and ecological processes. Humans shape pyrodiversity both directly, by manipulating the intensity, severity, frequency and extent of fires, and indirectly, by influencing the abundance and distribution of various trophic guilds through hunting and husbandry of animals, and introduction and cultivation of plant species. Conceptualizing landscape fire as deeply embedded in food webs suggests that the restoration of degraded ecosystems requires the simultaneous careful management of fire regimes and native and invasive plants and animals, and may include introducing new vertebrates to compensate for extinctions that occurred in the recent and more distant past.
History
Publication title
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume
371
Issue
1696
Article number
20150169
Number
20150169
Pagination
1-11
ISSN
0962-8436
Department/School
School of Natural Sciences
Publisher
Royal Soc London
Place of publication
6 Carlton House Terrace, London, England, Sw1Y 5Ag