Tag: Bushfires

Burning Issues

Over the years, we have published several blogs concerning orchids and fire. At the beginning of the year, Renate Faast spoke at the NOSSA February meeting. John Eaton wrote an extensive summary of her talk which is reprodued here as it appeared in the 2019 March edition of the Native Orchid Society of South Australia Journal, Volume 43 Number 2.

Renate’s take home message was that we cannot make sweeping statement about orchids and fire, each species responds differently and we need to take this into account when planning proscribed. This was something that Dr Michael Duncan also brought out in his 2009 report following the Victorian Black Saturday fires – see Orchids and Fire.

An interesting aside to Renate’s research was her observations of white-winged choughs – see the paragraph Not All Relationships are Friendly.

Stipi fire 3Guest Speaker Notes                                John Eaton

At our February 26th meeting, thirty NOSSA members were treated to a stimulating talk by Dr Renate Faast from the University of Adelaide – our first guest speaker for 2019.

Renate acknowledged the support her project received from an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant under the Linkage Program which promotes national and international research partnerships between researchers and publicly funded research agencies – in Renate’s case – support from the University of Adelaide, SA Museum, SA Water, Forestry SA, The Australian Orchid Foundation, the Nature Foundation of SA, The Environment Institute and the SA Government.

Mixed Messages

Renate had been getting mixed messages from the field observations people had made following prescribed burning or bushfires. This ARC grant enabled her to study the impacts of prescribed burning on native terrestrial orchids.

Renate found that the response of orchids to controlled burns suggests that there are winners and losers amongst orchids: Naked sun orchids responded really well to a controlled burn with 6 plants growing to 83 plants. REALLY good news for that species of orchid but the reality is more complicated than that and this study suggests that there are no generalisations that can be drawn with any confidence about regeneration following prescribed burns or bushfires! In view of the complex interactions between orchids and other plants, and between orchids and bird-and-animal grazers, orchids rely on so many things to go right in order to set seed and recruit new plants into a population. With the exception of a few self-pollinating species, most orchids rely on pollinators for seed production. For non-clonal species, releasing seed is the only way to ensure the species’ long-term survival!

Not all relationships are friendly

Over 80% of orchid flowers had been grazed at some sites. No flowers means no seeds. Renate’s film clips embedded in her PowerPoint dramatically showed the extent of orchid predation by birds such as white-winged choughs and currawongs. They picked off the flowers quite deliberately, leaving behind an intact stalk. Five flowers were grazed every 10 sec (that’s at a rate of 30 flowers/min!) And there are all the other orchid grazers such as roos, deer and rabbits as they move through a patch, often only grazing part of the stem, in a far less targeted and thorough way, compared to these birds. All of these interactions play a key role in whether seeds are released to keep the population viable.

The Mount Bold Fire prompt

160219 Anita Marquart Melangyna collatus on Caladenia rigida

While engaged in her PhD research into reproductive ecology of spider orchids, Renate heard that a fire at Mt Bold had led to a “profusion” of Caladenia rigida flowers! The Victorian bushfires had also prompted changes to prescribed burning practises in South Australia. The combination of these two events led Renate to explore the effect of fire on the interactions orchids have with other plants and animals – leading her to ask such questions as:

  • Does fire promote the flowering of spider orchids (e.g. Caladenia rigida, C. behrii, C. tentaculata) and Glossodia major?
  • If there are more flowers following fire, will they be pollinated and will they set seed?
  • How does burn timing influence this response?
  • Do all species respond in the same way?

These are all critical issues to consider if we are to ensure a self-sustaining orchid population in the future.

1710 JH Arachnorchis tentaculata sm

Seasonal Factors

There are seasonal influences on the effects of a burn. The response to a summer bushfire could be quite different from cooler season burns in autumn and spring. And even if some orchids are stimulated to flower, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will end up producing and releasing more seed – which is what really matters for the long-term survival of the orchid population.

Orchid monitoring was carried out in several sites and included 1 autumn, 3 spring burns and 4 adjacent unburnt control sites across the Mt Lofty Ranges (NE of Adelaide). Renate followed the fate of 4 species by tagging up to 150 plants for each species. Renate’s presentation focused on the Millbrook sites where she studied C. rigida and G. major before and after a prescribed burn conducted in Autumn 2013. Unfortunately and fortuitously, her control site also became a bushfire site following the Sampson Flat Fire in January 2015. Fortunately, the Autumn burn site was not affected by the Sampson Flat Fire, so became something of a control site! Renate found that 97% of C. rigida did not emerge after the Autumn prescribed burn compared with 8% at the unburnt control affected site. Flowering was not promoted and no tagged plants flowered. A similar but less severe effect was recorded for Glossodia major.

Will these orchids recover in subsequent years?

Annual monitoring up until 2017, revealed that over one third of C. rigida plants did not re-emerge for 5 consecutive years after the autumn burn. Unfortunately, these plants are likely to have been killed by this burn, probably because the fire was conducted as the orchids were about to emerge. Interestingly, spring burns did not have a detrimental impact on the orchids studied, however, a proportion (18 – 28%) of C. rigida plants may also have been killed by the summer bushfires.

One of the more striking findings out of this research was the large increase in pollination for C. rigida following the bushfires – up to 65% of flowers (protected from grazing) produced a seed pod – an unprecedented rate for Renate’s research. It seems that in the sparse blackened landscape with very few other plants in flower, C. rigida had most of the attention for pollinators. However, the removal of understorey cover also meant that grazing rates were higher after the fires, and most of the flowers that were not protected inside cages were eaten. This meant that there was no actual benefit to the orchids, as there was no increase in seed release. All of these responses were short-lived, and by spring 2016, pollination, grazing and seed release rates were much the same as before the fires.

Arachnorchis behrii 1
Arachnorchis behrii (Pink Lipped Spider Orchid)

Renate’s Conclusions:

All species are not equal – fires may benefit some species others don’t fare so well;
All fires are not equal;
Autumn burning may be detrimental to SOME species;
Bushfire may benefit seed release, only if grazing pressure is low – and
Flowering was not promoted by any fire.
More research is needed on other species, and in different habitats.

Therefore, Renate pointed out that no generalisations can be made about her observations!

Some good news that has come out of this research:

  • Burn practices are changing, with land managers taking into account the timing of prescribed burns, and bestattempts are made to avoid late autumn burns in areas containing threatened (early-emerging) orchids;
  • Impacts of fire on reproductive success appear to be short-term

Renate’s hope is that one day, the message will get out there that while some orchids can respond well to burning, this isn’t the case for all species – and that we still have a long way to go before we will really understand the complexities that underlie these different responses with any degree of predictability. Renate also warned that over a third of SA’s orchids are threatened with habitat loss, weed invasion, pollinator loss, grazing and fire regimes.

Renate’s address was followed by a flurry of burning questions and observations. It is hoped that we NOSSA members will use Renate’s conclusions to guide and inform our own anecdotal field observations and test our underlying assumptions and prejudices about the effects of burning on orchid viability – especially as we enter an unprecedented and potentially species-destroying period of human – induced global warming.

Stipi fire 2

 

Orchids, Insects and Fire

Recently, 10th February 2016, Anita Marquart, PhD student, Adelaide University spoke at the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia. She is a recipient of the Society’s Lirabenda Endowment Fund Research Grant.   At the meeting she gave a summary of her research – Orchids, Insects and Fire: Investigating the impacts of prescribe burning on orchid pollinators in Southern Australia. Though she has not finished collating the data she has kindly supplied a summary of her talk with her preliminary findings.

It is always encouraging to see research on our native orchids. They are the Barometer of the Bush, so the more we can discover about them, hopefully the more we will better understand how to manage our native bushland.

 

Orchids, Insects and Fire: Investigating the impacts of prescribed burning on orchid pollinators in Southern Australia

Anita Marquart, Renate Faast, José M. Facelli, Andrew Austin

School of Earth and Environmental Sciences,

The University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005 Australia

PhD Project

Summary

Fire is an important ecological factor in Australian ecosystems. Orchids that depend on specific pollinators may be more susceptible to disturbance than more generalist species. Therefore, declines or changes in pollinator communities due to prescribed burns and wild fires could lead to reduced pollination success and consequently declines in orchid populations. The project combines traditional plant and insect ecology with advanced molecular techniques to identify orchid pollinators and assess their response to prescribed burns and wild fires. Insect relevant habitat characteristics (such as floral abundance, vegetation height, presence of logs, litter and standing litter) were assessed and trapping surveys of potential orchid pollinators were conducted in spring, before and after prescribed burns. The effect of both spring burns and autumn burns is being investigated.

Study sites are located in the Adelaide hills with always one burn and one adjacent control site respectively in Kersbrook Native Forest, Millbrook Reservoir, Para Wirra Recreation Park and South Para Reservoir. Some parts of the study sites in Kersbrook and Millbrook were affected by the Sampson Flat Bushfire. Affected sites are used to compare the effects on orchid pollinators after prescribed burns in contrast to wild fires.

Potential orchid pollinators are being identified using DNA barcoding with the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene. Sequencing results will be compared with existing databanks and confirmed using morphological identification. As the data accumulates it will build up a reference library of COI barcodes for the species found in the surveys.

The outcome of this research project might help to advise the optimal management of orchid species under fire-managed regimes in the Mount Lofty region of South Australia, as well as more generally in south eastern Australia.

160219 Anita Marquart Melangyna collatus on Caladenia rigida
A hoverfly, Melangyna collatus on Arachnorchis rigida syn Caldenia rigida (Rigid White Spider Orchid)

 

Orchids and their pollinators

Native bees, thyninne wasps and Syrphid flies are known orchid pollinators of South Australian orchid species. Orchids of main interest for this study were Caladenia rigida, Caladenia behrii, Caladenia tentaculata and Glossodia major. Caladenia tentaculata and C. behrii are sexually deceptive orchids and are known to be pollinated by thynnine wasps (Bates 2011). In contrast, C. rigida is food advertising and uses a broad range of bee and fly species, such as native bees and hoverflies (Faast et al. 2009). Glossodia major is a generalist in its pollination strategy and is using small native bees of several genera (Bates 2011, personal observations).

Preliminary findings

Syrphid flies were successfully separated into different species using DNA barcoding methods. Results show that we have two dominating species on our field sites in the Adelaide hills. Both species, Melangyna collatus and Symosyrphus grandicornis are common native Australian species. Both species were caught with orchid pollinia attached and were observed on Caladenia rigida flowers.

First findings suggest that hoverflies don’t seem to be much affected by prescribed burns or bushfires. Syrphid fly numbers vary greatly between the years of sampling, but we did not find a significant impact of prescribed burning or the Samson Flat bushfire.

Statistical analyses for the data on syrphids, native bees and thynnine wasps are currently underway.

Preliminary findings suggest that a range of pollinators are still present on field sites after prescribed burns and even after bushfires. Nevertheless, some specific species might be more sensitive to fires and might have disappeared from the study sites. For example, orchids relying on one species of wasp could be more affected by changes in the abundance of their pollinator after fire, than orchids that are pollinated by a number of different insects.

We will have to analyse our results in more detail to look into the specific species composition for the insect families, especially for native bees and thynnines, rather than looking at overall abundance.

160219 Anita Marquart Melangyna collatus with pollinia
Hoverfly, Melangyna collatus with orchid pollinia attached

References:

Faast R, Farrington L, Facelli JM, Austin AD (2009). Bees and white spiders: unravelling the pollination syndrome of Caladenia rigida (Orchidaceae). Australian Journal of Botany 57, 315–325.

Bates, R. J. (2011). South Australia’s Native Orchids. Native Orchid Society of South Australia.

Orchids and Fire

Bushfires are a part of the Australian landscape.  The effect upon people and animals can be devastating but what of their effect upon orchids?  In 2012, Mike Duncan published a report Response of Orchids to Bushfire, Black Saturday 2009 for the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment.

Page one is a good summary of the effects experience by the orchids in Victoria:

This project addresses general community concerns about the response of orchids to the 2009 bushfires, by documenting the range of orchid responses encountered across all fire affected areas.  The information presented in the report is the result of data synthesis and direct field observations from a variety of sources, collected during the two years since the fires.
The response of orchids to the February 2009 bushfires was diverse, spanning the spectrum from being killed by fire, to being totally dependent upon the fire to flower.  In this report, the spectrum of responses that were encountered have been divided into five broad categories.

1. Fire Killed Species
Populations of epiphytes (e.g. Sarcochilus australis) and terrestrials with shallow tubers (e.g. Thynninorchis huntianus) were killed by the intense fire front.  In some cases, these species are likely to recolonise by seed from nearby unburnt areas, but in other cases, these species may require conservation intervention to assist in their recovery.

2. Fire Sensitive Species
Species such as Pterostylis alveata and Corunastylis despectans appear to have been sensitive to the bushfire, showing a large reduction in emergence over the following two years.  Populations of these species are likely to recover naturally over a number of years.

3. Fire Neutral Species
The response of the winter and spring flowering Pterostylis species were generally fire neutral, with their flowering rates neither increasing nor decreasing in the two years since the bushfire.

4. Fire Stimulated Species
The flowering of many Caladenia, Diuris, Prasophyllum and Thelymitra species was strongly stimulated by the 2009 bushfire, creating spectacular patches of massed flowering in the fire-blackened landscape.  Similarly, many smaller genera (e.g. Pheladenia and Glossodia) also showed a strong increase in flowering in response to the bushfire, sometimes producing clumps of more than 20 flowering plants.

5. Fire Dependent Species
There are four species (Burnettia cuneata, Pyrorchis nigricans, Leptoceras menziesii and Prasophyllum australe) that are dependent upon fire to flower.  These species are able to survive for extended periods without flowering.  Stimulated by the occurrence of the 2009 bushfire, these four species flowered en masse during spring 2009 (and to a lesser extent in spring 2010); the first time most of these plants have flowered since each site was last burnt.
Four nationally threatened orchid species (Caladenia concolor, C. orientalis, C. tessellata, and Pterostylis chlorogramma) occur within the area affected by the 2009 bushfire.  These species are part of an ongoing monitoring program, and the collected data offers an opportunity to quantify the post-fire flowering response of these species.  The data showed that grazing had negatively impacted seed production in each species since the 2009 bushfire.  It would also seem reasonable to assume that similarly high levels of grazing have occurred to other orchid species during this period.  A reduction in seed production is an important concern to any orchid species, but it is of particular concern to fire sensitive species, as it will lengthen the recovery time for these populations.  A reduction in seed production represents a lost opportunity for species that are fire stimulated or fire dependent, in terms of achieving recruitment to a population.  Fire-affected populations of these species will require careful management to ensure that seed production is not compromised into the future.

To see the full report, click here .………

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