Increasing prevalence of severe fires change the structure of arthropod communities: Evidence from a meta-analysis

1. Animal ecology and evolution are shaped by environmental perturbations, which are undergoing unprecedented alterations due to climate change. Fire is one such perturbation that causes significant disruption by causing mortality and altering habitats and resources for animals. Fire regimes are changing on a global scale, but the effects of these changes on animal communities are poorly understood. Arthropods are one of the most ubiquitous and diverse animal taxa on the planet and their populations are sensitive to environmental change. Given their wide-ranging impacts on ecosystem functioning, a better understanding of arthropod responses to changing fire regimes is critical and may also provide more general insights into how other groups might respond to fire.
2. Here, we provide a comprehensive meta-analytical assessment of how fire influences the arthropod community across habitats and functional groups. Using data from 130 peer-reviewed papers across the globe, we tested how a var...