The disproportionate importance of long-unburned forests and woodlands for reptiles

1. Our understanding of the impacts of time since fire on reptiles remains limited, partly because there are relatively few locations where long-term, spatially explicit fire histories are available. Such information is important given the large proportion of some landscapes that are managed with frequent prescribed fire to meet fuel management objectives. 2. We conducted a space-for-time study across a landscape in south-east Australia where the known fire history spanned 6 months to at least 96 years. Four methods were used to survey reptiles in 81 forest and woodland sites to investigate how time since fire, habitat and environmental variables affect reptile richness, abundance and composition. 3. We used generalised linear models, generalised linear mixed models, PERMANOVA and SIMPER to identify relationships between the reptile assemblage (richness, abundance and composition respectively) and time since fire, habitat and environmental variables. 4. All three reptile metrics were as...