Research Database

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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.

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fish and Wildlife Habitat

habitat, biodiversity

Publication Type: Journal Article

Finding floral and faunal species richness optima among active fire regimes

Year: 2025

Changing fire regimes have important implications for biodiversity and challenge traditional conservation approaches that rely on historical conditions as proxies for ecological integrity. This historical-centric approach becomes increasingly tenuous under climate change, necessitating direct tests of environmental impacts on biodiversity. At the same time, widespread departures from historical fire regimes have limited the ability to sample diverse fire histories. We examined 2 areas in California's Sierra Nevada (USA) with active fire regimes to study the responses of bird, plant, and bat…

Fire History, Fish and Wildlife Habitat

fire regimes, biodiversity, fire severity, wildlife

Publication Type: Journal Article

Indigenous pyrodiversity promotes plant diversity

Year: 2024

Pyrodiversity (temporally and spatially diverse fire histories) is thought to promote biodiversity by increasing environmental heterogeneity and replicating Indigenous fire regimes, yet studies of pyrodiversity-biodiversity relationships from areas under active Indigenous fire stewardship are rare. Here, we explored whether Indigenous pyrodiversity promoted plant richness and diversity in an arid ecosystem from north-western Australia. We selected landscapes that ranged from highly pyrodiverse and under active Indigenous burning to more coarse-scale and less diverse mosaics under lightning…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Social and Community Impacts of Fire

indigenous fire stewardship, biodiversity, fire regimes

Publication Type: Journal Article