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Responses of insect pollinators and understory plants to silviculture in northern hardwood forests

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Abstract

Communities of flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae), bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), and flowering plants were compared between harvested and unharvested hardwood stands in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Group-selection silviculture (where groups of trees are removed from a forested matrix, rather than single trees), increased the abundance of pollinators and flowering stems, but only after leaf-out. Wild red raspberry (Rubus strigosus) and bees benefitted most from the creation of canopy gaps. The combination of increased light, warm, bare soils, and abundant nectar-rich raspberry flowers probably created ideal habitat for soil-nesting bees, factors which are relatively absent from unharvested stands. By contrast, before leaf-out, spring ephemerals and high light-levels were universal and pollinators were even across treatments. More pollinators were caught in canopy gaps than in forested areas, and the proportion of fertilized ovules of spring beauty (Claytonia caroliniana) was higher in gaps than in the forest, suggesting that pollinators prefer foraging in gaps, even in spring. Group-selection silviculture in hardwood forests proved beneficial to native pollinating insects, at least in the short-term.

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Abbreviations

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

GSS:

Group-selection silviculture

PERMANOVA:

Permutational multivariate analysis of variance

MDS:

Multi-dimensional scaling

PGP:

Permanent growth plot

RGP:

Regeneration growth plot

SE:

Standard error

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Cory Sheffield and Dr. Jason Gibbs for identifying the bees and Andrew Young for identifying our unknown Platycheirus. Dr. Doug Tozer, Karla Falk, Rhiannon Leshyk, Emony Nichols, Gillian Humphries, and Hugo Kitching helped in the field. Funding was provided by the National Science and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Pollination Initiative, for which this is publication No. 43. In-kind support was provided by Algonquin Forestry Authority, Bancroft-Minden Forest Co., Canadian Forest Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, Enhanced Forest Productivity Science Program, Mazinaw-Lanark Forest Inc., Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Ottawa Valley Forest Inc., Tembec Inc., Trent University, and Westwind Forest Stewardship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department, Trent University, 2140 East Bank Drive, Peterborough, ON, K9J 7B8, Canada

    Eleanor Proctor & Erica Nol

  2. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 659 Exeter Road, London, ON, N6E 1L3, Canada

    Dawn Burke

  3. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 300 Water Street, Peterborough, ON, K9J 8M5, Canada

    William J. Crins

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  1. Eleanor Proctor
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  2. Erica Nol
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Correspondence to Eleanor Proctor.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 10.

Table 10 Plants
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Appendix 2

See Table 11.

Table 11 Syrphids
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Appendix 3

See Table 12.

Table 12 Bees
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Proctor, E., Nol, E., Burke, D. et al. Responses of insect pollinators and understory plants to silviculture in northern hardwood forests. Biodivers Conserv 21, 1703–1740 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-012-0272-8

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