Fighting the flames: site-specific effects determine species richness of Australian frogs after fire

Brittany A. Mitchell; Simon B. Z. Gorta; Corey T. Callaghan; Richard T. Kingsford; Jodi J. L. Rowley

doi:10.1071/WR22175

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Next Contents Vol 51(1)

Fighting the flames: site-specific effects determine species richness of Australian frogs after fire

Brittany A. Mitchell

^A ^B ^* , Simon B. Z. Gorta

^A , Corey T. Callaghan

^C ^D , Richard T. Kingsford

^A and Jodi J. L. Rowley

^A ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Centre for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.

^B Australian Museum Research Institute, Australian Museum, 1 William Street, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia.

^C German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Puschstr. 4, Leipzig 04103, Germany.

^D Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, University of Florida, Davie, FL 33314-7719, USA.

^* Correspondence to: brittany.mitchell@unsw.edu.au

Handling Editor: Natasha Robinson

Wildlife Research 51, WR22175 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR22175

Submitted: 21 October 2022 Accepted: 18 November 2023 Published: 19 December 2023

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Context

Fire has played an integral role in regulating patterns of biodiversity for millions of years. However, anthropogenic disturbance and climate change has altered fire activity – driving increases in both fire severity and scale. The effect fire now has on the persistence of biodiversity is poorly known, especially for frogs. Studies examining frog responses to fire usually have small sample sizes, focus upon small geographic areas and are based on low-severity fires, which can mean results are not applicable to high-severity fires, such as those expected under future climate change.

Aims

Our aims were to examine (1) persistence of frog species, measured by species richness, up to 18 months post-fire, and (2) the effects of varying fire severity on frog species richness and recovery, where we expected higher fire severity to lead to lower species richness after fire.

Methods

Using large-scale citizen science data from the Australian Museum’s FrogID project, coupled with remotely sensed fire data, we present a spatially and taxonomically broad analysis examining post-fire recovery responses for Australian frog species after the 2019/2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires.

Key results

We reveal no overall decrease in the species richness of Australian frogs both in the short- and long-term post-fire. Furthermore, species richness did not decline with increasing fire severity. Instead, species richness and its response to fire was highly site-specific.

Conclusions

We provide evidence that widespread and common Australian frog species have persisted post-fire in most sites and concluded that this is potentially due to their ability to shelter from fire adequately and/or La Niña-driven high rainfall offering conditions conducive to breeding activity and persistence.

Implications

We show how citizen science provides critical data for conservation, especially in response to unprecedented disturbance events, such as the 2019/2020 megafires. Our research also highlights the need for ongoing and targeted scientific monitoring, especially for less common or threatened species.

Keywords: citizen science, climate change, conservation, ecology, fire, frogs, remote-sensing, species richness.

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