Responses of Arthropods to Fire and How Pollinators and Pollination Services Are Affected by Fire Severity

<p>Fires impact ecosystems globally and due to climate change, there are shifts in fire regimes that impact ecological communities which provide essential ecosystem services. Focusing on arthropods, fire can influence this ubiquitous animal group in various way. We performed a comprehensive meta-analysis evaluating how fires impact differing arthropod functional groups. We found that overall, fire negatively effects community level responses for most functional groups with herbivores as the only exception showing some positive effects of fire. We also studied mixed-severity fires that burned >20 years ago and compared floral visitor communities across fire severities. We implemented a pollinator exclusion experiment to determine how floral visitors impacted fruit set of wax currants (Ribes cereum). We found that there was no difference in floral visitor communities or fruit set of wax currants across fire severity but that the pollinator exclusion treatment did have a significant impact on fruit set, especially early-season pollinators.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2022

Author dc:creator

• Bieber, Blyssalyn V.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shannon M. Murphy
• Adrian Carper
• Julie Morris
• Erica Larson

• Fire
• Climate change
• Pollinators
• Ecology
• Behavior and Ethology
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Other Life Sciences
• Other Plant Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/2046

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-3029