Data from: An experimental test of whether pyrodiversity promotes mammal diversity in a northern Australian savanna

1. The increasing awareness that a fire regime that promotes biodiversity in one system can threaten biodiversity in another has resulted in a shift away from fire management based on vague notions of maximising pyrodiversity, towards determining the optimal fire regime based on the demonstrated requirements of target species. 2. We utilised a long-running, replicated fire experiment on Melville Island, the largest island off the northern Australian coast, to test the importance of pyrodiversity for native mammals in a northern Australian savanna landscape. We first developed statistical models to determine how native mammal abundance has responded to nine years of experimentally-manipulated fire frequency. Next, given each species’ modelled response to fire frequency, we identified the level of pyrodiversity and optimal mix of fire frequencies that would be expected to maximise mammal diversity and abundance, and minimise extinction risk. This was done for both the entire mammal assemblage and for the mammal species currently declining on Melville Island. 3. Fire frequency was a significant predictor of abundance of the northern brown bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus), black-footed tree-rat (Mesembriomys gouldii), brush-tailed rabbit-rat (Conilurus penicillatus), grassland melomys (Melomys burtoni), pale field-rat (Rattus tunneyi), and mice/dunnarts but not for the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). 4. The geometric mean abundance (GMA) of the entire mammal assemblage was positively associated with pyrodiversity, but peaked at an intermediate value. Hence, maximising pyrodiversity would reduce native mammal assemblage GMA below its potential maximum. The fire history for an area that maximised the entire native mammal assemblage GMA consisted of 57% long-unburnt, 43% triennially burnt and