Abstract
Prescribed burning is a common management technique in tallgrass prairie remnants, but there have been few empirical studies that directly examine burning impacts on the nesting preferences and habitat of ground-nesting bees. We used emergence traps in remnant tallgrass prairies in western Minnesota, USA to determine whether ground-nesting bees prefer to nest in burned or unburned prairies. We estimated the total number of nests made by actively nesting bees in burned and unburned patches by assessing each specimen for wing and mandible wear, sex, and sociality. We also measured characteristics that may influence bee nesting preferences including bare ground, thatch depth, vegetative cover, and the floral community. We found more nests of actively nesting ground-nesting bees in burned patches than unburned patches, but no differences in effective number of species of ground-nesting bees or community composition. Burned patches had higher amounts of percent bare ground and a thinner thatch layer, but no differences in percent vegetative cover, floral abundance, flowering plant species richness, effective number of species of flowers or community composition. Our results suggest that ground-nesting bees prefer to nest in burned patches of remnant tallgrass prairies and highlight opportunities for future research to better understand bee nesting ecology in response to prairie management.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | Insect Conservation and Diversity |
| DOIs | |
| State | Accepted/In press - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The project would not have been possible without the support from H. Morales Uribe, Y. Metreaud, G. Reuter and M. Mackert, for their help in designing the custom-designed emergence traps. Many thanks to M. Vohs, S. Gedlinske, M. Shanahan, A. Waananen, L. Gedlinske, C. Dolph, M. Carr-Markel, Victor Ramírez-Juárez, A. Tona, C. Herron-Sweet, K. Friedrich, G. Pardee, R. Morris, L. Fulton, M. Dutta, D. Harder, T. Saba, E. Evans, I. Bur and M. Goblirsch, for support building traps and/or supporting the fieldwork or specimen processing, to M. Marek-Spartz, M. Shanahan, V. Wauters, I. Lane, J. Beck, A. Brokaw, M. Spivak, E. Snell-Rood, D. Larkin for their input on analysis and manuscript revisions that greatly improved the article, and to J. Gardner for support with bee identification. We also would like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtful contributions that greatly improved the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the US Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources who manage the sites where we conducted this study and supported. The authors would like to thank the following organisations for their financial support: the Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund (M.L. 2017, Chp. 96, Sec. 2, Subd. 03n) to DPC, the Small Grants Program from Prairie Biotic Research Inc, the Student Restoration Research Grant from the Society for Ecological Restoration Midwest Great Lakes Chapter, The Wallance and Mary Lee Dayton Fund of the Bell Museum Natural History Award, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant No. 1839286).
Funding Information:
The project would not have been possible without the support from H. Morales Uribe, Y. Metreaud, G. Reuter and M. Mackert, for their help in designing the custom‐designed emergence traps. Many thanks to M. Vohs, S. Gedlinske, M. Shanahan, A. Waananen, L. Gedlinske, C. Dolph, M. Carr‐Markel, Victor Ramírez‐Juárez, A. Tona, C. Herron‐Sweet, K. Friedrich, G. Pardee, R. Morris, L. Fulton, M. Dutta, D. Harder, T. Saba, E. Evans, I. Bur and M. Goblirsch, for support building traps and/or supporting the fieldwork or specimen processing, to M. Marek‐Spartz, M. Shanahan, V. Wauters, I. Lane, J. Beck, A. Brokaw, M. Spivak, E. Snell‐Rood, D. Larkin for their input on analysis and manuscript revisions that greatly improved the article, and to J. Gardner for support with bee identification. We also would like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtful contributions that greatly improved the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the US Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources who manage the sites where we conducted this study and supported. The authors would like to thank the following organisations for their financial support: the Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund (M.L. 2017, Chp. 96, Sec. 2, Subd. 03n) to DPC, the Small Grants Program from Prairie Biotic Research Inc, the Student Restoration Research Grant from the Society for Ecological Restoration Midwest Great Lakes Chapter, The Wallance and Mary Lee Dayton Fund of the Bell Museum Natural History Award, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant No. 1839286).
Funding Information:
Wallace and Mary Lee Dayton Fund of the Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota; Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund, Grant/Award Number: M.L. 2017, Chp. 96, Sec. 2, Subd. 03n; National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Grant/Award Number: 1839286; The Society for Ecological Restoration Midwest Great Lakes Chapter; Prairie Biotic Research Inc Funding information
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Insect Conservation and Diversity published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Entomological Society.
Keywords
- emergence tents
- emergence traps
- prairie management
- prescribed burn
- remnant prairie
