Revisiting the pyrodiversity-biodiversity hypothesis: long-term fire regimes and the structure of ant communities in Neotropical savannas

1. The idea that variable fire regimes (pyrodiversity) may increase habitat heterogeneity and, consequently, increase biodiversity at the landscape level is a relatively old one. However, this idea has been recently challenged by studies showing that the biota of fire-prone ecosystems is so resilient to fire that variation in fire regime has little ecological consequences. 2. We evaluated how communities of ants – a dominant faunal group – differ with variation in the frequency and seasonal timing of fire in Brazilian Cerrado (savanna), a global biodiversity hotspot. We compared the number and composition of ant species foraging on the ground and in trees among experimental treatments with three fire frequencies (unburned for 37 years and burned every 2 or 4 years for the past 16 years) and three seasonal timings (early, mid and late dry season) of fire with a biennial frequency. 3. There were no significant differences in ant species richness in trees, and there were no significant dif...