People's Choice Award winner for EE: The impact of prescribed burning on native bee communities (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) in longleaf pine savannas in the North Carolina sandhills

The longleaf pine ecosystem once covered 37 million hectares in the southeastern United States. Now reduced to about 3% of its original extent, this system depends on fire for its continued existence. Prescribed fire is an important silvicultural tool used to maintain remaining longleaf pine forests. Bees are essential pollinators of angiosperms in this system, but their responses to prescribed fire are poorly understood. We used pan trap sampling to investigate the response of the native bee community (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) in the Sandhills of North Carolina to prescribed fire on a three-year rotation. Bee abundance declined with time since fire, with 2.3 times more bees captured in the most recently burned sites than in unburned controls. Bee diversity also declined with time since fire, with 2.1 times more species captured in the most recently burned sites than in controls. Bee community composition also responded to fire, and this response was mediated in part by the effect of fire on the amount of bare ground and canopy cover. Bees nesting below ground had greater abundance in recently burned sites, whereas aboveground nesters were unaffected by time since fire. Our results indicate that prescribed burning is a silvicultural practice consistent with pollinator conservation in longleaf pine ecosystems. (Note: This abstract is a lightly edited from the original publication featured in this talk.)