Data for Teixido et al. 2023. Post-fire effects in the Cerrado

Fire is a major ecological and evolutionary factor promoting biodiversity and maintaining functioning of naturally fire-prone ecosystems. In tropical savannas, plant communities show a set of fire-adapted traits and both flowering and pollination services have the potential to rapidly regenerate after fire, but the effects of this perturbation on plant-pollinator interactions are poorly understood. We evaluated the dynamics of plant community assemblage, floral availability and composition, and pollinator activity and diversity over ten post-fire stand ages along a 14-year post-fire chronosequence in a naturally burned region in the Cerrado, a megadiverse savanna in Brazil. We expect to find a high resilience of plant-pollinator communities and a steady decline in the successional recovery as time since fire proceeds following potential woody encroachment. Along the post-fire chronosequence, vegetation was dominated by shrubs with tubular, white and nectar flowers arranged in inflorescences, while bees were the predominant pollinators. Plant assemblage and flower number showed an initial significant increase but monotonically declined after 7-9 years after fire. Accordingly, pollinator richness and abundance significantly reaching highest peaks in interim periods and a steady decline over time. In contrast, the frequency of community-wide plant life-form, flower functional traits and pollinator diversity remained unaltered over the post-fire chronosequence. We added compelling evidence of a high post-fire resilience of plant-pollinator communities in the Cerrado. Our study reinforces the assumption that fire is one of the most important selective agents driving composition and functioning in this Brazilian biome and improves our understanding in how fire-suppression policies may affect pollination.