Insect species assessment in the Ozark ecoregion and the effect of fire on grassland Acrididae

Insect populations worldwide are undergoing substantial and rapid declines in biomass, often referred to as the ‘insect apocalypse.’ The suspected causes vary, but suggested reasons focus on the combined effects of habitat alteration and loss, pesticides and pollutants, invasive species, and factors relating to climate change. Some of these losses have been documented in protected areas, highlighting the role that land management plays in supporting insect diversity. Unfortunately, our understanding of the relationship between habitat management and insect populations is obscured by the lack of species-level insect identification in the vast majority of studies. I investigated four different facets of these issues in Oklahoma. First, I examined the relationship between grasshopper species abundance and prescribed burning, which can have a differential effect based on traits of the grasshoppers, including wing length, host preference, and adult size, as well as the spring or fall timing of the fire. Secondly, I explored the biodiversity of four different insect taxa in Ozark Mountain glades, isolated grasslands surrounded by forests that may act as a buffer to anthropogenic disturbance for isolated insect populations. I found populations of grassland specialist butterflies and grasshoppers, which tended to occur more frequently in managed glades, and documented many other rare species, including distribution expansions and new state records. I then compared the data from butterfly surveys to observations submitted to the community-science platform iNaturalist. iNaturalist observations approximated survey data for a region over the course of a year, but not over smaller spatial or temporal scales. Lastly, I estimated the population of one of the rare butterflies that I found, the Diana fritillary. At Camp Gruber I used a mark and recapture study, and gained new insights into its life history that can improve future survey efforts.