If We Build It, Will They Come? Insect Communities As Indicators

IF WE BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME? INSECT COMMUNITIES AS INDICATORS OF RESTORATION IN AN URBAN PRAIRIE NETWORK Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Science in Biology By Amanda Nicole Finke Dayton, OH December 2019 IF WE BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME? INSECT COMMUNITIES AS INDICATORS OF RESTORATION IN AN URBAN PRAIRIE NETWORK Name: Finke, Amanda Nicole APPROVED BY: Chelse M. Prather, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor Assistant Professor Department of Biology Karolyn Mueller Hansen, Ph.D. Committee Member Associate Professor Chair, Department of Biology Ryan W. McEwan, Ph.D. Committee Member Associate Professor Department of Biology ii © Copyright by Amanda Nicole Finke All rights reserved 2019 iii ABSTRACT IF WE BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME? INSECT COMMUNITIES AS INDICATORS OF RESTORATION IN AN URBAN PRAIRIE NETWORK Name: Finke, Amanda Nicole University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. Chelse M. Prather The increasing negative effects of human impacts on the Earth have led to the urgent need for large-scale ecological restoration. One ecosystem of particular interest for restoration is tallgrass prairie, which only has 4% of its original 167 million acre range remaining in North America. However, restored and constructed prairies often do not support the same biodiversity and ecosystem services as remnant prairies. Many restoration projects only focus on reinstating vegetation, assuming that other trophic levels will colonize on their own. These higher trophic levels include arthropods, which make up a majority of the biodiversity in prairie ecosystems. We sought to determine if there is a difference in the insect communities in constructed and remnant prairies. It was hypothesized that insect communities would be different, with higher arthropod abundance and diversity in remnant sites, and older constructed sites would more closely resemble remnant sites. It is possible that indicator species of high-quality prairie could be identified, and that they may possess certain functional traits (morphological or life history) that allow them to colonize these sites. Sweepnet samples (100 sweeps per site) were taken at 5 old fields, 5 constructed prairies, and 5 remnant prairies in 2017, and 7 iv constructed prairies and 6 remnant prairies in 2018. All arthropods were then sorted to order, and some orders to morphospecies. The only order of insects whose abundance was significantly different between habitat types was Coleoptera (p = 0.041), which were 3.5 times more abundant in remnant sites than constructed sites. The only family of Coleoptera whose abundance was significantly different between habitat types in 2017 was Phalacridae (p = 0.046) which were 7.6 times more abundant in remnant sites than constructed sites. The abundance of Phalacridae in constructed prairies increased with age since construction (p = 0.03, R2 = 0.63; p = 0.09, R2 = 0.47). Ordinations of beetle families show that certain families are not being restored soon after the project, but rather restored slowly over long periods of time as late-successional species are able to colonize, such as Phalacridae. These results could have large implications on how tallgrass prairies are restored and managed, and how these ecosystems should be assessed for restoration, specifically looking at other aspects of the ecosystem other than vegetation. v To my parents, for giving me the world. Thank you for your endless love and support. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to express my immense gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Chelse Prather. Thank you for your continuous support and encouragement, and for allowing me to turn an undergraduate research project into a master’s thesis. I would also like to thank my committee members, Drs. Ryan McEwan and Karolyn Hansen, for their helpful feedback and guidance throughout my entire time at UD. Thanks to all of the park districts and land managers who allowed me to sample their prairies for this study, as well as Dave Nolin for sharing his extensive knowledge of Ohio prairies. Thank you to all of the Prather Lab members (past and present) who have helped me with this project, whether it was processing soil samples or just listening to me talk about beetles for what was probably an unreasonable amount of time. I appreciate each of you. I would also like to thank the other graduate students, especially my fellow ecologists. Thank you for all of the coding sessions, Brown Bags, chats, and overall friendship. Finally, a special thanks goes to the 2 people without whom I would not be here: my parents. To my dad, thank you for being my field assistant and driving all over southwest Ohio with me. To my mom, thank you for always proofreading my papers for me and for always being willing to talk. You both have given me every opportunity I could have ever asked for and have encouraged me to follow my dreams. Thank you for always believing in me even when I don’t believe in myself. vii This research would not have been possible without funding from the University of Dayton Graduate Student Summer Fellowship and the noble sacrifice of thousands of insects. viii PREFACE “Here is the means to end the great extinction spasm. The next century will, I believe, be the era of restoration in ecology.” E. O. Wilson (1992) Throughout our history, humans have had profound impacts on ecosystems across the globe. The ecosystems of the world have been changed more in the last half century than any other point in recorded human history, and nearly all ecosystems have been significantly altered by human activity (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). As our population has continued to grow at an exponential rate, much of the land on Earth was subsequently converted for human use (Houghton 1994). In the roughly 30 years it took for the human population to double from 2.5 billion to 5 billion, more land was converted for agriculture than the 150 years between 1700 and 1850 (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). More than one-third of land on Earth has been converted for human use while at least another one-third has been heavily degraded by consequences of human use such as habitat fragmentation, invasions, and pollution (Vitousek et al. 1997; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). In the past 100 years, humans have increased the species extinction rate by as much as 1,000 times the typical rates over Earth’s history, propelling us into the sixth mass extinction (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005; Jackson 2008; Barnosky et al. 2011; Pievani 2014; Ceballos et al. 2015; McCallum 2015). ix These negative anthropogenic effects are only projected to worsen as our populations continue to grow, and the effects of climate change become more severe (Thomas et al. 2004). These changes have led to the urgent need for large-scale ecological restoration. Restoration is, of course, a meager second to the preservation of original ecosystems, and the ideal solution would be to avoid degradation in the first place. But with much of the planet already developed for human use, restoration remains one of the only options to keep these native ecosystems intact for generations to come. x TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iv DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………….....vii PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………...ix LIST OF FIGURES...……………………………………………………………………xii LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………..…….xiii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 METHODS………………………………………………………………………………..6 RESULTS…………………………………………………………………………………9 DISCUSSION……………………………………………………………………………12 FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………...19 TABLES………………………………………………………………………………....29 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………..40 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Historic range of tallgrass prairie in the United States (left) and current range of tallgrass prairie in the United States (right)…………………………………….19 Figure 2. Counties sampled in this study shown in green (left) and all sites sampled are labelled and color coded based on habitat type (right)………………………………20 Figure 3. An example of each habitat type is shown…………………………………….21 Figure 4. Boxplot showing total abundance of arthropods in August 2017……………..22 Figure 5. Boxplot showing abundance of Coleoptera in August 2017…………………..23 Figure 6. Boxplot showing abundance of Phalacridae in August 2017………………….24 Figure 7. Linear regressions of abundance of Phalacridae and age since construction….25 Figure 8. Cluster analysis of 2017 insect order data………………………………………26 Figure 9. NMDS ordinations of beetle communities at each sampling period in 2018….27 xii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. List of sites sampled in this study including habitat type and location………...29 Table 2. Results from an ANOVA with Poisson distribution to determine differences between the 3 habitat types of 2017 insect order data………………………31 Table 3. Results from an ANOVA with Poisson distribution to determine differences between the 3 habitat types of 2017 beetle family data……………………..32 Table 4. Results from a repeated measures ANOVA with a Poisson distribution to determine differences between sampling periods and habitat types using 2018 beetle abundances………………………………………………………………………..33 Table 5. Results from a repeated measures ANOVA with a Poisson distribution to determine differences between sampling periods and habitat types using 2018 Phalacridae abundances………………………………………………………………….34 Table 6. Results of Indicator Species Analysis (ISA) of 2017 insect order

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