Research Database
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Frequent, heterogenous fire supports a forest owl assemblage
Year: 2025
Fire shapes biodiversity in many forested ecosystems, but historical management practices and anthropogenic climate change have led to larger, more severe fires that threaten many animal species where such disturbances do not occur naturally. As predators, owls can play important ecological roles in biological communities, but how changing fire regimes affect individual species and species assemblages is largely unknown. Here, we examined the impact of fire severity, history, and configuration over the past 35 years on an assemblage of six forest owl species in the Sierra Nevada, California,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Showy dragonflies are being driven extinct by warming and wildfire
Year: 2025
Rising temperatures may disrupt reproduction before becoming lethal; thus mating traits could define species vulnerability to warming. Here, using >1,600 estimates of local extinction for 60 dragonfly species, we show that species with mating-associated wing ornamentation experienced more extinctions and lost more habitat under warming and following wildfire burn than non-ornamented species. By contrast, sensitivity was not affected by ecological traits, such as thermal limits, habitat specialization or body size.
Publication Type: Journal Article