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Abstract
Fire is an ecological and evolutionary force on the regulation of species traits, population dynamics, species interactions, and community composition. Reactions to fire disturbances result in adaptations to persist in the habitat, and/or recolonize post-fire. Early research investigated the frequency, seasonality, and severity of fire, but our understanding of how the spatial extent of fire and landscape heterogeneity may impact biodiversity remains underdeveloped. Fire management is structured around conservation objectives and the manipulation of one or more fire characteristics to meet said objectives. Insects are an integral part of these fire disturbed habitats, and their response to fire has gained a lot of recent attention.Insects are the most biodiverse animal group in the world, and they present many excellent potential bioindicator taxa to assess trends in community composition and dynamics. Insects also possess a wide range of functional diversity and provide critical ecosystem services such as pollination. Insects, and specifically pollinators, have experienced several anthropogenic stressors and disturbances that have led to the concern over the “insect apocalypse.” Conservation research into the optimal habitat conditions to support pollinator communities has been growing over the past few decades. Our goal is to better understand the mechanisms of how pollinators respond to the spatial characteristics of fire.
Results from a meta-analysis suggest that the total area of a fire does not impact pollinators. In loblolly pine forests, we find a negative effect of the internal buffer distance on pollinator communities. However, species richness and diversity remain high in the centers of burns, suggesting the pollinator community is not limited in their ability to recolonize these habitats post-fire. In longleaf pine forests, with even larger internal buffer distances, we find that pollinator diversity is greater in the center than compared to the edge of burns. Our findings suggest that prescribed fire is beneficial to the pollinator communities, and that fire size is not limiting pollinator communities from recolonizing the centers of burns in pine forests of the southeastern United States. Other spatial data such as landscape heterogeneity or pyrodiversity may help us understand the mechanisms behind the effects of fire on pollinators.