PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 7: Disturbance Ecology: Fire; Litter; Animal response
Monday, August 8, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 518 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Burning questions for small mammals: Using life history traits to predict species response to fire.

Plavsic, Militsa^*,1, ¹ University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT- Disturbance, including fire, is now recognized as a key process in the maintenance of alpha and beta diversity in many systems. Small mammals provide an excellent model system with which to examine the effects of fire on vertebrate populations and communities. As a species' life history influences its vulnerability to extrinsic threats, previously documented correlations between well-studied species' post-fire responses and their life histories can be used to predict the impacts of fire on less well-studied small vertebrates. I tested the use of life history traits as predictors of fire response in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, where only basic information is known about the area's small mammal fauna and anthropogenic fires are common. I live-trapped in six, 1-ha grassland grids between September 2003 and April 2005, conducting controlled burns on three randomly selected grids in May 2004. I recorded species, sex, breeding condition, and weight for all captured animals and individually marked each new capture. All six grids were initially similar in their small mammal species composition, densities, and total captures. After burning, and as predicted by published life history information, three of the six most commonly trapped species were "fire-positive" or "fire-neutral" while the other three were "fire-negative." These findings point to the utility of predictive models of species response to fire and agree with a coarse meta-analysis I have conducted of small mammal fire ecology studies worldwide. That synthesis provides further evidence of a link between traits, such as utilisation of burrows/ground nests, diets, and average litter sizes, with post-fire population responses.

Key words: small mammals, fire ecology, life history, meta-analysis