Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Grant Report

How do changes in plant community structure affect terrestrial invertebrate communities? We compared the abundance of ants and predacious beetles between twelve plot pairs with distinct plant communities. One community of each pair was dominated by a thick stand of invasive tall oatgrass while the plant community in the other plot pair was maintained in a state more similar to its native plant composition. We found higher ant abundance through time in the grass-dominated plots. Beetle abundance did not differ between plot types. Whether these effects persist through time, and how they affect other members of the insect community, remains an open question that we plan to continue to investigate