Watershed clearcutting and canopy arthropods

Abstract

The southern Appalachian forests are home to myriad species of insects, spiders, and other arthropods. There are more than 4,000 invertebrate species know in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park , and easily a thousand insect species in the Coweeta basin alone. The forest environment, with its favorable microclimates and structural diversity, offers a large variety of niches, different host-plant species, and soil and litter habitats. Of this vast assemblage of arthropod species, most are predators that keep prey populations at low abundances, and only a few insects ever reach population sizes that can cause any economic damage to the forest. When these occasional outbreaks do occur, they can be severe. The discipline of forest entomology has the goal of preventing timber loss to insects, and most of the knowledge of forest insects has been developed within the context of economic importance. The principal goal of insect ecology, in contrast, is to understand insect response to and influence on ecological processes.

Citation

Reynolds, Barbara C.; Schowalter, Timothy D.; Crossley, D.A., Jr. 2014. Watershed clearcutting and canopy arthropods. In: Swank, Wayne T.; Webster, Jackson R., comps., eds. Long-term response of a forest watershed ecosystem. Clearcutting in the southern Appalachian. Oxford University Press: 146 -155.