Short spatiotemporal fire history explains the occurrence of beetles favoured by fire

This data set belongs to a study of density of firest fires and occurrence of pyrophilic beetles in southern Sweden. 

The number and area of forest fires in northern Europe has been dramatically reduced during the last century and several fire-favoured species are now threatened. To promote 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 km2 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 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 fire. Hence, to preserve fire-favoured insects, prescribed fires must be close in space and time to other fires – whether prescribed or natural.

https://doi.org/10.3390/insects15100775