774 M. J. Hodgson et al.


FIG. 2 (a) Occurrence records used for the habitat suitability model of D. rhodogaster across the eastern seaboard of Australia. Approximate locations of reliable D. rhodogaster records not recorded in the Atlas of Living Australia (2021) near the towns of Gloucester and Tenterfield are indicated. (b) Probability of suitable habitat generated by the habitat suitability model: values closer to 0 represent a low suitability and values closer to 1 represent high suitability. The location of Hunter Valley is indicated. (c) Plot of latitude vs elevation (m) of the locations for which the habitat suitability model for D. rhodogaster predicted a probability of suitable habitat .0.5.


Living Australia in the 2 years after the Black Summer bush- fires. Of these, 28 records were from unburnt areas and 10 records were from burnt areas (Fig. 3). Notably, in the first year after the fires all five snakes recorded in the Atlas of Living Australia were detected in areas that had been burnt.


Discussion


Our results show that c. 46%of the predicted distribution of D. rhodogaster was burnt during the Black Summer bush- fires. However, our field surveys suggest that fire severity and burn extent at the site level probably had negligible impacts on the occupancy of D. rhodogaster. Similarly,


FIG. 3 Records of D. rhodogaster used to assess occurrence across the species distribution in south-eastern Australia in the years following the Black Summer bushfires. We obtained locality records from the Atlas of Living Australia (extracted 25 March 2022) and field surveys reported in this study. The shaded area represents areas burnt during the Black Summer bushfires.


occurrence records reported in public databases show that D. rhodogaster was recorded in areas that had been burnt during the Black Summer bushfires, with many of these snakes being observed during the first 12 months following the fires. Collectively, the results of our surveys and citizen science records indicate that D. rhodogaster has continued to occur in areas burnt by the Black Summer fires, suggest- ing that the fires had limited effects on the distribution and occupancy of D. rhodogaster within forest habitats. During and immediately following the Black Summer


there was significant concern regarding the effects of the fires on wildlife populations. Consequently, understanding the environmental conditions and life histories predisposing taxa to declines or persistence after severe fires is currently a strong focus of research in Australia (Ensbey et al., 2023). Several studies have found that rainforest species appear to have been adversely affected by the Black Summer fires (Law et al., 2022a; Beranek et al., 2023), yet for grassland and dry forest species evidence of adverse effects is mixed (Webb et al., 2021; Hartley et al., 2023). However, for some


Oryx, 2024, 58(6), 769–778 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605324000048


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