As a consequence to climate change and resulting severe weather events such as prolonged hot and dry periods, wildfire frequency increases globally. Progressively, these effects are noticeable in high latitude countries such as Sweden where a megafire burned 13 100 ha of managed coniferous forest in 2014. While the effect of fire on species communities has been much studied, species surveys often only collect data opportunistically after a wildfire, making inferences about the fire effect uncertain. In this study my aim was to examine the response of peatland dwelling beetles (Coleoptera) to fire by comparing beetle communities of burned drained Swedish peatlands and adjacent non-burned (reference) areas. The first beetle survey took place in 2009, the second was carried out in 2020, 6 years after the fire occurred. Both surveys used pitfall traps in a burned and un-burned area, which were divided into two types of mires, fen and bog, respectively. As a result of the post-fire recovery, dead wood accumulated in the burned area and shrubs and young trees replaced the original vegetation. The reference area did not show significant changes in vegetation. Over all 188 species were found in 2009 and 256 in 2020. In 2009 most species were found in the pre-fire area while in 2020 most species were found in the reference area. Further, two red-listed species (conservation category NT) were found in the fire area as well as two new species for Västmanland country. As expected, the fire had a large impact on the beetle community, where once dominant species declines and got replaced by more dispersive or more moisture striving species. In contrast to my expectations, not only the fire area showed notable changes in the beetle community regarding diversity and composition, also the reference area showed changes in species dominance and a high species turnover. Although the before-after-control-impact study design illustrates the independence of the fire impact to the changes in species composition over time, the results suggest that the time between the surveys (10 years) was the main factor for the community change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-462500 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Happ, Janina |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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