Discussion
Fire has played an important role in shaping tropical biodiversity for
millennia (Kelly et al., 2020), with studies reporting contrasting
impacts on biodiversity (Kelly et al., 2020; He et al., 2019). To
explain this heterogeneity, we analysed a systematic compilation of data
quantifying species richness and community composition responses to fire
in tropical communities of major plant life forms. Our analyses account
for variation across biomes and quantify responses to time since fire
and fire type (prescribed or non-prescribed burns) and assess if
protected area status modifies plant community responses.
Despite conducting a comprehensive literature search, we only found 28
studies that met our data analysis requirements. There is thus a clear
need for additional empirical fieldwork that assesses plant community
responses to fire; such studies should follow the open science
principles of making underlying datasets freely available to facilitate
meta-analyses. Our focal studies included ones that assessed
biodiversity recovery up to twenty-nine years following fire events, but
most studies were conducted within ten years of a fire event. Given that
we find plant community composition can remain impacted by fires ten
years after they occur (see below discussion) there is a particular need
for long-term (> ten years) longitudinal studies. Our
results indicate that changes in species richness and recovery of
community composition following fire events vary across plant life
forms. This heterogeneity across life forms suggests that apparent
contradictions in the published literature regarding the impacts of fire
on plant communities may arise from variations in which life forms
dominate the focal plant communities. We thus encourage future studies
to take this into account in their study design and interpretation.
Despite the limitations of data availability and duration of studies our
analyses provide important novel preliminary insights regarding
biodiversity responses and recovery from fire events.