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CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Thesis
Biodiversity of Bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) and Macromoths (Lepidoptera) on Fairchild Air Force Base
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
05/2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000007422
Abstract
Insects are critical to the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems around the globe and their importance cannot be overstated. Many aspects of the modern day are impacting the overall survival of insect fauna; climate change and habitat loss being chiefly among those. Of all the insects, pollinators are a particularly important group because the act of pollination is a keystone ecosystem service that contributes heavily to biological diversity. Bees and moths are two of the largest pollinator taxa among insects. Because of their contribution as pollinators, these two taxa are also important indicators of ecosystem health. Many bees are specialists on the pollen of particular plants and the presence of different species can help us understand the diversity of angiosperms in a given area and availability of floral resources for other pollinators. Moths are often host-plant specific as larvae and can similarly inform plant biodiversity in a given area. These animals were used as focal groups during our survey of Fairchild Air Force Base (FAFB), just west of Spokane, Washington. Military Training Areas (MTAs), like the one surveyed at FAFB, are known to harbor a disproportionate number of endangered and imperiled species compared to land owned by other U.S. government agencies and may also play a role in conserving biological diversity in general. Our findings in this study support this idea. We spent two field seasons performing regular surveys of FAFB that utilized both active and passive collecting methods. We found an unexpectedly high biodiversity of bees on our study site, including several undescribed species and many new records for Spokane county and one for the state. Our assessments of moths, too, showed a high biodiversity and reflected what is typical of an eastern Washington dry grassland and sagebrush shrub-steppe habitat. Surveys are critical to documenting biological diversity and change through time and ours will create a baseline for future assessments of FAFB's insect fauna. The proportionally high biological diversity of critical groups like bees and moths found during this study reinforces the importance of the role that military land plays in conservation, and how critical it is to perform surveys like this.
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Details
- Title
- Biodiversity of Bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) and Macromoths (Lepidoptera) on Fairchild Air Force Base
- Creators
- Alexis M. Menth
- Contributors
- Elizabeth A. Murray (Co-Chair)Richard S. Zack (Co-Chair)Silas Bossert (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Entomology
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 74
- Identifiers
- 99901221251801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis