Transitional areas between ecosystems, called ecotones, are areas of biotic and abiotic change often leading to differences in plant communities and soil conditions. Insect communities using surrounding plants and soil are likely to be structured by these resources. However, flying insects have the unique advantage of avoiding obstacles giving them a large potential range to gather and utilize resources. As a result, flying insect communities should not be structured by surrounding plant communities or abiotic factors. To test this, we conducted a survey of the flying insect communities to compare with existing tree and soil surveys. This study was conducted in Jennings Woods, a temperate hardwood forest in Northeast Ohio comprised of riparian, upland, and bottomland forests separated by elevational gradients, each with its own particular soil parameters. We used baited traps to collect flying insects during 4 separate collection time periods, preserved samples in ethanol, and then sight-identified to lowest practical taxonomic level.
Results/Conclusions
As expected, the flying insect community was not structured by the tree community nor the soil. However, community structure was significantly related to ecosystem type. We also found that Shannon’s diversity and taxonomic richness were significantly different between ecosystems and dates. Taxonomic richness was highest in fall sampling dates while diversity was highest in spring and summer sampling dates. In addition, we did not find a significant change in community structure near the ecotones specifically. This suggests that edge effects do not play a critical role in structuring flying insect communities. Overall, our results suggest that there are ecosystem and time differences structuring flying insect communities, but they are not limited by the surrounding soil or tree communities.