Exploring Prescribed Fire Severity Effects on Ground Beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Taxonomic and Functional Community Composition

Stephen C. Mason; Vaughn Shirey; Evan S. Waite; Michael R. Gallagher; Nicholas S. Skowronski

doi:10.3390/fire6090366

journal article Open Access Sep 19, 2023

Exploring Prescribed Fire Severity Effects on Ground Beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Taxonomic and Functional Community Composition

Stephen C. Mason Vaughn Shirey

Evan S. Waite

Michael R. Gallagher

Nicholas S. Skowronski

Fire Vol. 6 No. 9 pp. 366 · MDPI AG

View at Publisher Save 10.3390/fire6090366

Abstract

Prescribed fire is a management tool that is frequently used to foster biodiversity. Simultaneously, insects that provide essential ecosystem services are globally declining. Within the pyroentomology literature, there are mixed reports of positive and negative effects that prescribed fires have on insect communities. This is likely due to not accounting for fire heterogeneity created by fire severity. To better understand prescribed fire severity effects on insect communities, we used multispectral reflectance data collected by Sentinel-2 to methodically quantify prescribed fire severity and compared ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) taxonomic and functional community composition responses between an unburned site and two burned sites with contrasting fire impacts. We found 23 ground beetle species and used 30 morphological, physiological, phenological, and ecological functional traits for each species. We found that our moderate fire severity site had different taxonomic and functional community compositions from both our unburned and high-severity sites. Surprisingly, we did not find a strong difference in taxonomic or functional ground beetle composition between our unburned and high-severity sites. Our results encourage future pyroentomology studies to account for fire severity, which will help guide conservation managers to make more accurate decisions and predictions about prescribed fire effects on insect biodiversity.

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Details

Published: Sep 19, 2023
Vol/Issue: 6(9)
Pages: 366
License: View

Authors

S

Stephen C. Mason

Department of Natural Sciences, Immaculata University, Immaculata, PA 19345, USA; Department of Biodiversity, Earth & Environmental Science, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

V

Vaughn Shirey

Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA; Department of Biological Sciences, Marine and Environmental Biology Section, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA

E

Evan S. Waite

School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA

M

Michael R. Gallagher

USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Silas Little Experimental Forest, New Lisbon, NJ 08064, USA

N

Nicholas S. Skowronski

USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Morgantown, WV 26508, USA

Funding

Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Award: 15-1-04-55

Joint Fire Science Program Award: 15-1-04-55

Chesapeake (and Delaware) Bay Watershed Research Award: 15-1-04-55

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Conserve Wildlife Matching Award: 15-1-04-55

Claudio Elia Memorial Fellowship Award: 15-1-04-55

Cite This Article

Stephen C. Mason, Vaughn Shirey, Evan S. Waite, et al. (2023). Exploring Prescribed Fire Severity Effects on Ground Beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Taxonomic and Functional Community Composition. Fire, 6(9), 366. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6090366

Exploring Prescribed Fire Severity Effects on Ground Beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Taxonomic and Functional Community Composition

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