Milberg Per, Bergman Karl-Olof, Jansson Nicklas, Norman Henrik, Sundin Fia, Westerberg Lars, Johansson Victor
IFM Biology, Conservation Ecology Group, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden.
Insects. 2024 Oct 7;15(10):775. doi: 10.3390/insects15100775.
The number and area of forest fires in northern Europe have been dramatically reduced during the past century, and several fire-favoured species are now threatened. To promote the recovery of these species, prescribed burning is often used as a conservation measure, and to optimise the use of these conservation burns, knowledge is needed on suitable fire frequency, size and placement in the landscape. The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of recent fire history (12 yrs) on beetles sampled using smoke attraction traps at 21 forest sites in a 10,000 km region. We analysed the odds of finding a fire-favoured beetle species or individual among the beetles in each trap using a new spatiotemporal connectivity measure and compared the results to non-fire-favoured and saproxylic species. For fire-favoured beetles, both the number of species and individuals significantly increased with connectivity to previous fires, while the other two groups did not. The spatiotemporal connectivity that best explained the patterns suggests that fire-favoured beetles mainly respond to fires within a 2 km range up to 2-3 years after the fire. Hence, to preserve fire-favoured insects, prescribed fires must be close in space and time to other fires-whether prescribed or natural.
在过去的一个世纪里，北欧森林火灾的数量和面积都大幅减少，一些喜好火灾的物种如今受到了威胁。为促进这些物种的恢复，规定火烧常被用作一种保护措施，而为了优化这些保护性质的火烧的使用，需要了解合适的火灾频率、规模以及在景观中的位置。本研究的目的是分析最近的火灾历史（12年）对在一个10000平方公里区域内21个森林地点使用烟雾吸引诱捕器采集的甲虫的影响。我们使用一种新的时空连通性测量方法分析了在每个诱捕器中的甲虫中发现喜好火灾的甲虫物种或个体的几率，并将结果与非喜好火灾的物种和蛀木性物种进行比较。对于喜好火灾的甲虫，物种数量和个体数量都随着与先前火灾的连通性显著增加，而其他两组则没有。最能解释这些模式的时空连通性表明，喜好火灾的甲虫主要对火灾发生后2至3年内2公里范围内的火灾做出反应。因此，为了保护喜好火灾的昆虫，规定火烧在空间和时间上必须与其他火灾（无论是规定火烧还是自然火灾）接近。
