Terrestrial Invertebrate Communities Associated with Rio Grande Wild Turkey Habitat in the Edwards Plateau Ecoregion of Texas

Rio Grande wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo intermedia, RGWT) require invertebrate prey to fulfill protein and energetic demands associated with critical life periods. In the Edwards Plateau Ecoregion (EPE), the South Llano River (SLR) and North Llano River (NLR) experience contrasting hydrologic flows (i.e., perennial and intermittent, respectively) which create habitat conditions in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems that facilitate terrestrial, semi-aquatic, and aquatic invertebrate availability and biomass. No current information exists on the baseline ecological invertebrate components nor invertebrate forage selection by RGWT in the EPE. Therefore, to fill this research gap, we established two paired 40-meter transects across upland and riparian habitats at five sites with known occurrences of RGWT, three on the SLR and two on the NLR within Kimble County, Texas. Sampling transects included nine pitfall traps and a 10-meter sweep net sample in herbaceous vegetation, collected every 13-15 days from April – July in 2023 and 2024. We identified 205 unique invertebrate families among upland and riparian areas in the NLR and SLR watersheds and additionally documented 252 species with first time county reports in iNaturalist. We detected 1.6-times more individual invertebrates in riparian habitats but a similar number of invertebrate families between riparian and upland sites (177 > 168, riparian > upland) with approximately 76% of all collected individuals represented by three orders (Coleoptera, Hemiptera, and Hymenoptera respectively, excluding Isopoda). The numerically dominant invertebrate families collected across riparian and upland habitats included Armadillidiidae, Formicidae, Lygaeidae, Scarabaeidae, Gryllidae, Tenebrionidae, and Acrididae. Our findings provide a refined look at the potential invertebrate food base for RGWT and a detailed invertebrate diversity dataset for supporting a future molecular analysis (i.e., DNA metabarcoding) that will be used to compare invertebrate taxa occurrences in RGWT fecal samples to potentially relate to community data reported herein. Our findings refine what we know about dominant and/or recurring food resources for RGWT and may inform land management practices to focus on conserving sensitive riparian areas or promoting upland vegetation cover that provide refugia and additional resources for invertebrate prey. Each chapter is formatted as an independent manuscript and formatted for the Journal of Wildlife Management.