Following megafires fishes thrive and amphibians persist even in severely burned watersheds
Wildfires are increasing in severity, frequency and size threatening freshwater species that adapted under different disturbance regimes. However, few wildfire studies have comprehensively evaluated freshwater populations and assemblages, accounted for post-fire forest management (salvage harvest + replanting), or incorporated broad spatial replication. Here, we reveal that stream vertebrate assemblages across thirty 4th order streams, spanning a range of both watershed fire severity and post-fire forest management extent, were minimally influenced by fire suggesting that fire alone (absent of channel resetting events) does not reset stream assemblages. Greater total vertebrate, total fish, and trout densities were associated with streams draining more severely burned watersheds, whereas sculpin, amphibian and crayfish densities did not appear to be influenced by burn severity. Post-fire forest management extent was associated with lower frog densities and greater age-0 trout densities. Our findings show that fishes thrive and amphibians and crayfish persist despite withstanding high-severity megafires.