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Data Without Borders ICE 2016: Difference between revisions
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Data Without Borders ICE 2016 (view source)
Revision as of 14:39, 11 December 2015
, 11 December 2015→Short Description
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| Acquisition, management, and analysis of historical and contemporary data to discern legacy effects of ecological extinction on insect biodiversity | | Acquisition, management, and analysis of historical and contemporary data to discern legacy effects of ecological extinction on insect biodiversity | ||
::Numerous economically important tree species are threatened with declines due to exotic pests or pathogens. Perhaps the best-known example is American chestnut, a culturally and ecologically important tree decimated by chestnut blight. The loss of American chestnut from the canopy in eastern deciduous forest had profound impacts on vertebrate food webs, but the effects of chestnut loss on insect biodiversity and trophic interactions remain largely unknown. The development of blight-resistant chestnut creates an unparalleled opportunity to study the effects of foundation species loss, and potential recovery, on insect food webs. Our objective is to generate and analyze historical and contemporary insect food webs for chestnut and oak focusing on herbivores and their natural enemies. We constructed a data matrix containing 1,049 records of individual insects associated with chestnut based on information and specimens from the Hopkins Notes and Records System housed at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. These records constitute 221 species, including herbivores and their natural enemies. In order to discern the extent of novel data derived from the Hopkins System, we surveyed the primary literature to construct a data matrix containing 259 records of individual insects representing 157 species associated with chestnut. Additionally, we placed three insect flight traps each in the canopies of American chestnut, Chinese chestnut, and red oak trees to discern the contemporary insect fauna sympatric with those tree species. This effort yielded 75, 72, and 75 samples, respectively, for the aforementioned trees with target insects exceeding 100,000 specimens. Lastly, we hand collected 279 lepidopteran larvae to discern host-natural enemy associations on the target tree species. This presentation focuses on three areas: (1) how multitrophic data derived from natural history collections, the literature, and contemporary sampling are gathered and managed; (2) questions data gathered from those sources might address using this research as an example; and (3) how products from this research are disseminated. | |||
| '''Robert Kula''' (Robert.Kula@ars.usda.gov), USDA - ARS, Washington, DC | | '''Robert Kula''' (Robert.Kula@ars.usda.gov), USDA - ARS, Washington, DC | ||
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