Fire activity varies substantially at global scales because of the influence of climate, but at broad spatiotemporal scales, the possible effects of herbivory on fire activity are unknown. Here, we used late Quaternary large-bodied herbivore extinctions as a global exclusion experiment to examine the responses of grassy ecosystem paleofire activity (through charcoal proxies) to continental differences in extinction severity. Grassy ecosystem fire activity increased in response to herbivore extinction, with larger increases on continents that suffered the largest losses of grazers; browser declines had no such effect. These shifts suggest that herbivory can have Earth system–scale effects on fire and that herbivore impacts should be explicitly considered when predicting changes in past and future global fire activity.

中文翻译：

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火灾活动对第四纪晚期食草动物灭绝的全球响应

由于气候的影响，火灾活动在全球范围内变化很大，但在广泛的时空尺度上，食草动物对火灾活动的可能影响尚不清楚。在这里，我们使用晚第四纪大型食草动物灭绝作为全球排除实验来检查草生态系统古火活动（通过木炭代理）对灭绝严重程度的大陆差异的响应。草地生态系统的火灾活动随着草食动物的灭绝而增加，在食草动物损失最大的大陆上增加幅度更大；浏览器下降没有这样的影响。这些变化表明，食草动物可以对火灾产生地球系统规模的影响，并且在预测过去和未来全球火灾活动的变化时，应该明确考虑食草动物的影响。