Data from: Belowground community responses to fire: meta-analysis reveals contrasting responses of soil microorganisms and mesofauna

Global fire regimes are shifting due to climate and land use changes. Understanding the responses of belowground communities to fire is key to predicting changes in the ecosystem processes they regulate. We conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of 1634 observations from 131 empirical studies to investigate the effect of fire on soil microorganisms and mesofauna. Fire had a strong negative effect on soil biota biomass, abundance, richness, evenness, and diversity. Fire reduced microorganism biomass and abundance by up to 96%. Bacteria were more resistant to fire than fungi. Fire reduced nematode abundance by 88% but had no significant effect on soil arthropods. Fire reduced richness, evenness and diversity of soil microorganisms and mesofauna by up to 99%. We found little evidence of temporal trends towards recovery within 10 years post-disturbance suggesting little resilience of the soil community to fire. Interactions between biome, fire type, and depth explained few of these negative trends. Future research at the intersection of fire ecology and soil biology should aim to integrate soil community structure with the ecosystem processes they mediate under changing global fire regimes.Extracted data from literature on soil organism responses to fireThe file contains data on soil organism biomass, abundance, richness, evenness, and diversity in burned and unburned soils extracted from peer reviewed publications published between 1988 and 2016 for use in meta-analysis. Soil organisms include bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa, and arthropods. The file contains three sheets: (1) a read me file describing the contents of data sheets and columns therein; (2) a list of all published studies from which data was extracted for meta-analysis including first author, publication year, and journal; (3) a data file containing all data and accompanying information extracted from each publication. The contents of all columns are described in the ReadMe tab and file.Pressler_Oikos_MetaAnalysis_Data.xlsxFunding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: US NSF DEB-1026843, DEB-121070