Hurricane Michael: Impacts of wind-damage on root feeding beetles and their associated blue-stain fungi within a longleaf pine woodland

When hurricanes impact forests, they may damage trees to an extent that benefits secondary agents such as lower stem and root-feeding beetles and the blue-stain fungi they vector. We sought to develop our understanding of the impacts of post-hurricane forest management approaches on these secondary agents. We established a research project within the Jones Center at Ichauway, a 12,000 hectares longleaf pine ecosystem in southwestern Georgia directly damaged in 2018 by Hurricane Michael. We placed traps in plots which had been wind-disturbed and not salvage logged, wind-disturbed followed by prescribed burning and salvage logging, and wind-disturbed followed by prescribed burning without salvage logging. We replicated these plots five times for a total of 15 plots across the study site. We are examining the degree to which beetle and fungal presence and abundance were affected by management actions. To address this, we collected Pachylobius, Hylobius, Hylastes and Dendroctonus species over a two-year period using Lindgren funnel traps baited with exo-brevicomin, ethanol and turpentine. We also isolated fungi (targeting Leptographium and Grossmania species) from a subset of live captured P. picivorus, H. pales, and D. terebrans beetles. In our preliminary data, we noticed that for the year following the hurricane the plots within the: wind-disturbed, prescribed burn, and salvage logged areas had a higher amount of target beetles than the other plots. Additionally, we have identified L. procerum from both P. picivorus and H. pales. This information indicates how management practices may affect these insects and blue-stain fungi.