Effects of oil and gas fragmentation on arthropod communities in the Allegheny National Forest

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MyKenna Zettle, Biology, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, St Marys, PA and Denise Piechnik, Biology, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Bradford, PA

Background/Question/Methods
Oil and gas well pads and accompanying access roads permanently fragment forested habitat into smaller patches. Over 100,000 wells can be found in the 517,000-acre Allegheny National Forest, as well as hundreds of miles of access roads. In the summer of 2019, bee bowls and blue vane traps were placed on six forest interior sites with dense vegetation, and the edge of six well pad sites to examine the response of insect abundance and diversity in the northern ANF. Mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, was an abundant pollen source at half of the well and interior sites. Insects were identified to order, while Hymenoptera were identified to family and functional group. These groups consisted of pollinators, parasitoids, and wingless arthropods.
Results/Conclusions
Sampling yielded 1,426 insects across all 12 sites. Total abundance did not differ between interior and well site categories, but abundance of orders varied greatly. Interior sites that contained K. latifolia had the highest abundances within seven of the 11 insect orders, including 57% of Hymenoptera and 44% of the most common order, Diptera. The highest abundances of Acari, Aranea, Collembola, Coleoptera, and Homoptera were also most abundant at interior K. latifolia sites. The biodiversity of these sites may have been influenced by the increased amount of canopy cover, moisture, and leaf litter that was found at these sites. Well sites with K. latifolia had the most Orthoptera (53%), while well sites without had more Thsyanoptera (48%). Additionally, parasitoid-type Hymenoptera were the most common form at each of the sites, except for those with a well and lacking K. latifolia, where pollinators were the most common group. Grasses and wildflowers were the primary vegetation at these sites, which likely supported the presence of pollinators. No wingless Hymenoptera were collected at the interior sites lacking K. latifolia, but were more common than pollinators at every other site. With additional changes to the study, mainly an increase in the number of sample sites at both interior and well-sites and identification of all specimens to genus, the effects of oil and gas extraction site on insects can be better understood.