The Fire and Fodder Reversal Phenomenon: Vertebrate Herbivore Activity in Burned and Unburned Tasmanian Ecosystems

Very few multi-species or ecosystem comparisons of post-fire vertebrate herbivore activity and food preference exist to inform fire management conservation strategies. We inferred (1–3 years) native introduced attraction six diverse temperate vegetation communities (grassland rainforest) from scat counts. hypothesised that where reduced herbaceous grassy (‘fodder’), herbivores would decline, preferences versus exotic differ significantly. Instead, we found evidence for a ‘fire fodder reversal phenomenon’ whereby macropod deer scats were more abundant after in consistently ‘fodder-poor’ types (e.g., heath) but less previously fodder-rich grassland). Fodder cover predicted macropod, wombat, bare ground was strongly associated with only, the latter indicating competition sources due their abundance high-altitude open ecosystems. We, therefore, environmental predictors each individual species/group suggest broadscale multi-environment, multispecies observations be informative potentially overlapping niches.