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Response of a temperate grassland ant community to burning

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Abstract

Ants are important components in terrestrial ecosystems and influence many ecosystem functions. In temperate grasslands, ants likely influence both invertebrate and plant diversity. We examined how fire, a natural disturbance in Pacific Northwest prairies, affects ant communities. In the Pacific Northwest, fire (i.e., prescribed burning) is also a common management strategy in maintaining shortgrass prairies. Using pitfall traps, we found a significant interaction of burning and location (i.e., north, middle, south) on the prairie. At the southern end of the prairie, burned plots had significantly more ants and higher diversity compared with paired unburned plots. This effect of burning, however, was not found in middle or northern areas of the prairie. These differences are likely driven by the nesting ecology of the dominant ant in the different parts of the prairie (Tapinoma sessile in the north and middle and Formica obscuripes) and/or distance to forest edge. To our knowledge, this is only the third study describing a prairie ant community in the Pacific Northwest, and the first to investigate effects of burning on such a community.

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Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code for analysis of data presented are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Schultz Lab at Washington State University (Vancouver, WA) and the Crone Lab at Tufts University (Medford, MA) for support and guidance during this project; Dan Grossboll, Emily Phillips, and Sarah Krock of JBLM Fish and Wildlife for help securing permits and field site access; Chelsea Thomas and Juniper Cook for help designing the experiment and setting up pitfall traps; Hanna Brush for help with field collection and sorting of ants; Chad Tillberg at Linfield University (McMinnville, OR) for help getting started with pitfall trap sorting and insect pinning/identification; Stefan Cover at Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, MA) for help creating our reference collection; Jack Longino for help identifying ants remotely; James Waters at Providence College (Providence, RI) for guidance and equipment to photograph specimens; the Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program for funding REB to do fieldwork and procurement of identification supplies; and two anonymous reviewers. The authors do not have any conflicts of interest.

Funding

This project was funded by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

REB conceived and designed the study, collected field data, carried out data analysis/interpretations, and wrote the manuscript. MM identified ants, provided consultation on data analysis, helped with generation of figures, and helped edit the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to R. E. Bonoan.

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Conflict of interest

The authors do not have any conflicts of interest.

Ethics approval

Pitfall traps were placed, and specimen were collected, with appropriate approval and documentation from Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) and JBLM Fish and Wildlife.

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N/A.

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Both authors approve of submission of this manuscript.

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Bonoan, R.E., McCarthy, M. Response of a temperate grassland ant community to burning. Insect. Soc. 69, 137–142 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-022-00851-x

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