Fire and forest fragmentation drive carabid beetle biodiversity loss

Hot off the press findings: together megafire and forest fragmentation reduce carabid species richness and total abundance.

In the year after the Australian megafires, fire reduced the number of carabid species (64 species in total) across the entire landscape, but had the biggest impact in forest fragments compared to continuous forest. Fire also impacted the total number of carabid beetle individuals across the landscapes but more so in fragments than continuous forest. This work is part of Matt Bitter’s PhD thesis.