Date of Award
2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.S.
Department
Biological Sciences
First Advisor
Shannon M. Murphy
Second Advisor
Adrian Carper
Third Advisor
Julie Morris
Fourth Advisor
Erica Larson
Keywords
Fire, Climate change, Pollinators, Ecology
Abstract
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.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Recommended Citation
Bieber, Blyssalyn V., "Responses of Arthropods to Fire and How Pollinators and Pollination Services Are Affected by Fire Severity" (2022). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2046.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/2046
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Rights holder
Blyssalyn V. Bieber
File size
67 pgs
Copyright date
2022
File format
application/pdf
Language
en
Discipline
Ecology
Included in
Behavior and Ethology Commons, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Other Life Sciences Commons, Other Plant Sciences Commons