Microfauna food preference and removal across UMBS burn chronosequence.

Abstract

The University of Michigan biological station burn plots are representative of a secondary successional chronosequence, describing forest succession atop a sandy outwash physiography.We examined arthropod preference between four treatments of rice throughout five different burn plots on property (1911, 1932, 1964, 1980, and 1998 burns). Rice grains were kept plain, or coated in butter, sugar, or salt, and then placed into the burn plots. To ensure only microfauna gained access to the food, we crafted wire cages to enclose the four rice treatments. We placed cages in each burn plot for 24 hours. We collected replicates and counted the remaining grains of rice to determine total food removed, and then analyzed the results for each treatment. We found no significant results in difference in arthropod food preference, however we did find a statistically significant difference in amount ofrice removed in the different burn plots. We also found a significant difference in units rice removed of the butter and sugar treatments, compared to the control group. We observed a decrease in rate of food consumption across older forests. We believe temperature to be a more influential environmental condition than we had anticipated. 24 hours is not indicative of the average conditions of any forest, possibly resulting in our inconclusi ve data, but we hope our research can better help understand the influence forest age has on its microfuana community and their search for food.