How does prescribed fire shape bird and plant communities in a temperate dry forest ecosystem?
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Prescribed fire has varying effects on bird and plant communities in a temperate dry forest ecosystem. For most individual bird and plant species, the relative abundance or cover did not significantly change with time since fire or differ from long-unburned vegetation . However, when bird species were grouped into functional groups, time since prescribed fire had strong effects on certain groups, such as birds that forage in the lower-midstorey and shrubs that resprout or seed . Bird communities varied significantly between different post-fire age classes, driven by species associated with understorey vegetation . Plant community composition showed little evidence of a post-fire successional trajectory . Fire regimes and environmental gradients influenced the distribution of bird and plant species, with inter-fire interval being the most influential component of the fire regime . Prescribed burns can increase the occurrence of rare plant species, but the effect on functional diversity depends on burn characteristics . Prescribed fire treatments had negligible effects on landbird community composition .
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| Papers (5) | Insight |
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| The provided paper does not specifically address the effects of prescribed fire on plant communities in a temperate dry forest ecosystem. The paper focuses on the short-term benefits of prescribed fire to bird communities in dry conifer forests of the western USA. | |
| The provided paper does not mention anything about the effect of prescribed fire on bird communities in a temperate dry forest ecosystem. | |
Open access 01 Jan 2006 | The paper states that prescribed fire had no consistent effect on the composition of the overall bird community or the volume of vegetation in the tree or shrub strata. Therefore, it suggests that prescribed fire had negligible effects on bird and plant communities in the temperate dry forest ecosystem. |
| Prescribed fire is not specifically mentioned in the paper. The paper focuses on how fire regimes and environmental gradients shape vertebrate and plant distributions in temperate eucalypt forests. | |
3 Citations | Prescribed fire in a temperate dry forest ecosystem did not significantly change the relative abundance or cover of bird and plant species. Bird communities varied between different post-fire age classes, driven by understorey vegetation. Plant community composition did not show a clear post-fire successional trajectory. |
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