Impact of season-long water abstraction on invertebrate drift composition and concentration

Surface water abstraction from rivers for irrigated agriculture is one of the largest uses of freshwater resources in the world. Water abstraction has important impacts on the structure of riverine assemblages. However, little work has examined the chronic, season-long impacts on ecosystem functions. Invertebrate drift is an important ecosystem function of river systems influencing nutrient cycling, food webs, and invertebrate population dynamics. We examined the season-long impact of reduced discharge resulting from multiple points of abstraction on drift assemblage composition, concentration, and total drift load. Early in the season, water abstraction had little impact on drift assemblage composition. However, later in the irrigation season, the drift assemblage at sites impacted by water abstraction diverged from upstream, control sites. The degree of change in assemblage composition at impacted sites was related to the amount of water abstracted such that sites with the lowest discharge also had assemblages that differed most strongly from control sites. Drift assemblages at impacted sites became dominated by tolerant microcrustaceans. In addition, water abstraction resulted in an increase in drift concentration (ind./m³). However, despite this increase in concentration at impacted sites, total drift load (# of invertebrates drifting in the river) decreased with decreasing discharge.Keywords: River ecosystems, Water discharge, Drift assemblages, Agroecosystem

A Method for Subsampling Terrestrial Invertebrate Samples in the Laboratory: Estimating Abundance and Taxa Richness

Significant progress has been made in developing subsampling techniques to process large samples of aquatic invertebrates. However, limited information is available regarding subsampling techniques for terrestrial invertebrate samples. Therefore a novel subsampling procedure was evaluated for processing samples of terrestrial invertebrates collected using two common field techniques: pitfall and pan traps. A three-phase sorting protocol was developed for estimating abundance and taxa richness of invertebrates. First, large invertebrates and plant material were removed from the sample using a sieve with a 4 mm mesh size. Second, the sample was poured into a specially designed, gridded sampling tray, and 16 cells, comprising 25% of the sampling tray, were randomly subsampled and processed. Third, the remainder of the sample was scanned for 4–7 min to record rare taxa missed in the second phase. To compare estimated abundance and taxa richness with the true values of these variables for the samples, the remainder of each sample was processed completely. The results were analyzed relative to three sample size categories: samples with less than 250 invertebrates (low abundance samples), samples with 250–500 invertebrates (moderate abundance samples), and samples with more than 500 invertebrates (high abundance samples). The number of invertebrates estimated after subsampling eight or more cells was highly precise for all sizes and types of samples. High accuracy for moderate and high abundance samples was achieved after even as few as six subsamples. However, estimates of the number of invertebrates for low abundance samples were less reliable. The subsampling technique also adequately estimated taxa richness; on average, subsampling detected 89% of taxa found in samples. Thus, the subsampling technique provided accurate data on both the abundance and taxa richness of terrestrial invertebrate samples. Importantly, subsampling greatly decreased the time required to process samples, cutting the time per sample by up to 80%. Based on these data, this subsampling technique is recommended to minimize the time and cost of processing moderate to large samples without compromising the integrity of the data and to maximize the information extracted from large terrestrial invertebrate samples. For samples with a relatively low number of invertebrates, complete counting is preferred

Investigating temporal patterns of a native bee community in a remnant North American bunchgrass prairie using blue vane traps

Native bees are important ecologically and economically because their role as pollinators fulfills a vital ecosystem service. Pollinators are declining due to various factors, including habitat degradation and destruction. Grasslands, an important habitat for native bees, are particularly vulnerable. One highly imperiled and understudied grassland type in the United States is the Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie. No studies have examined native bee communities in this prairie type. To fill this gap, the bee fauna of the Zumwalt Prairie, a large, relatively intact remnant of the Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie, was examined. Native bees were sampled during the summers of 2007 and 2008 in sixteen 40-ha study pastures on a plateau in northeastern Oregon, using a sampling method not previously used in grassland studies-blue vane traps. This grassland habitat contained an abundant and diverse community of native bees that experienced marked seasonal and inter-annual variation, which appears to be related to weather and plant phenology. Temporal variability evident over the entire study area was also reflected at the individual trap level, indicating a consistent response across the spatial scale of the study. These results demonstrate that temporal variability in bee communities can have important implications for long-term monitoring protocols. In addition, the blue vane trap method appears to be well-suited for studies of native bees in large expanses of grasslands or other open habitats, and may be a useful tool for monitoring native bee communities in these systems.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and can be found at: http://www.insectscience.org/.Keywords: Grasslands, Native bees, Bee monitoring, Community compositionKeywords: Grasslands, Native bees, Bee monitoring, Community compositio

Short-term responses of native bees to livestock and implications for managing ecosystem services in grasslands

Rangelands are significant providers of ecosystem services in agroecosystems world‐wide. Yet few studies have investigated how different intensities of livestock grazing impact one important provider of these ecosystem services—native bees. We conducted the first large‐scale manipulative study on the effect of a gradient of livestock grazing intensities on native bees in 16 40‐ha pastures in the Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie. Each pasture was exposed to one of four cattle stocking rates for two years and grazing intensity was quantified by measuring utilization. We measured soil and vegetation characteristics related to floral and nesting resources as well as several metrics of the bee community. Increased grazing intensity significantly reduced vegetation structure, soil stability, and herbaceous litter and significantly increased soil compaction and bare ground. Native bees responded with changes in abundance, richness, diversity, and community composition. Responses varied with taxa and time of season. Bumble bees were sensitive to grazing intensity early in the season, showing reduced abundance, diversity, and/or richness with increased intensity, potentially because of altered foraging behavior. In contrast, sweat bees appeared unaffected by grazing. These results show that native bee taxa vary in their sensitivity to livestock grazing practices and suggest that grazing may potentially be a useful tool for managing pollination services in mosaic agroecosystems that include rangelands

Biology and management of the potato tuberworm in the Pacific Northwest

The potato tuberworm, Phthorimaea operculella, is a pest of many solanaceous crops, including potatoes. Commonly found in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world, potato tuberworm (PTW) is one of the most important constraints to potato production worldwide. Larvae of this species mine leaves, stems, and petioles and excavate tunnels through potato tubers. Adequate control of PTW is critical because larval infestation of tubers renders potatoes unmarketable. There is zero tolerance for the presence of tuberworm larvae in raw processing product because they are classified as foreign material. Additional losses are likely from infested tubers that rot in storage or from spread that may occur early in the storage season.Published April 2007. Reviewed August 2013. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalo

DryadBeePlantAssociationDataFINAL

This file contains records of 692 native bee - flowering plant associations documented in 12 riparian sites along Meadow Creek in the USDA FS Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in eastern Oregon. Data were collected in 2014 and 2015. The dataset also includes data on flowering resource availability in the study area, with stem counts of each flowering forb or shrub on transects at all 12 sites. The type of bees collected on each individual plant species and the species richness of flowering forbs and shrubs on transects at all sites for each month of sampling for each year are also included

Data from: Associations between blooming plants and their bee visitors in a riparian ecosystem in eastern Oregon

Native bees are declining world-wide, but conserving or restoring their habitat requires a better understanding of bee-flower associations. High quality bee habitat includes flowers that provide pollen and nectar preferred by bees. However, little data exist about which plants are commonly used by bees in the Pacific Northwest, or whether bees prefer certain plant characteristics over others. We examined bee and plant communities in an Oregon riparian ecosystem. Our purpose was to describe bee-plant associations, determine which plants are most frequently visited by bees, identify plants that may be preferred by bees, and examine how a plant's native status, flower color, and floral morphology affect the types of bees visiting it. We found that many blooming plants received a diverse set of bee visitors, but some plants had a higher number and species richness of visiting bees than others. No plant species seemed limited to visitation by a small set of specialist bees. The number and type of visiting bees were not influenced by the plant's native status. However, flower morphology (but not color) significantly affected types of bees visiting plants. Bilaterally symmetrical and medium tubular flowers, with nectar and pollen typically more difficult to reach, were associated with larger bees with longer tongues, while smaller, easily accessible flowers attracted smaller bees with shorter tongues. Our results suggest that certain plants are particularly useful for supporting abundant and diverse bee communities, and increasing diversity in the morphology of blooming plants is a key factor to consider when restoring riparian areas for bee pollinators