Landscape scaling and occupancy modeling with Indiana longhorned beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

Shulin Yang, Purdue University

Abstract

I conducted landscape scaling analysis and habitat requirements analysis for longhorned beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) using data collected during our survey of the Cerambycidae of Indiana conducted by the Landscape Ecology and Biodiversity Laboratory. The survey was carried out in summers 2005 and 2006 on sites across Indiana. The scaling results suggested that different species responded to landscape characteristics, such as habitat amount and fragmentation, differently and at different scales. Results from the analyses on habitat requirements suggested that longhorned beetles present a variety of responses to landscape characteristics. Most species prefer a medium range of forest amount and landscape fragmentation. Several adult flower feeding species require higher amounts of forest than most non-flower feeding species. A surface metric, flow accumulation, was developed within the newly emerging body of three-dimensional gradient models for landscape ecology. This was applied to a longhorned species, Neoclytus m. mucronatus. The modeling results suggest that the "flow" of this beetle along host tree stress surface is complicated by landscape fragmentation, and is not as simple as the analogous flow of water along an altitudinal gradient.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Holland, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Ecology|Histology

COinS