Department of Entomology
  • About
    • At a Glance
    • Welcome
    • Code of Conduct
    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion >
      • DEI Working Group
      • Resources
    • Departmental History
    • For Alumni
    • Support Entomology >
      • Steinhauer Scholarship Fund
    • Contact >
      • Directions
  • News
    • News
    • Seminar Blog
    • Seminar Schedule
    • Awards
  • People
    • Faculty
    • Post Docs
    • Students
    • Staff
    • Alumni
    • For PI/Faculty
    • Proposal Resources
  • Academics
    • Graduate >
      • Admissions
      • MS Degree Requirements
      • PhD Degree Requirements
      • Graduate Student Resources
      • Forms for Grad Students
      • Financial Assistance
      • Award & Funding Opportunities
      • Entomology Student Organization
    • Online Masters in Applied Entomology
    • Undergraduate >
      • Entomology Minor
      • Honors Program
  • Research
    • IPM & Biological Control of Agricultural, Urban & Forest Pests
    • Ecology, Conservation, Restoration, Climate Change >
      • Pollinator Science and Apiculture
    • Evolution, Systematics and Evo-Devo
    • Genetics & Genomics and Medical Entomology
  • Extension/Outreach
    • Educational Outreach
    • Insect Camp
    • Insect Drawings
    • Insect Identification
    • Pesticide Education and Assessment Program
    • Plant Diagnostic Laboratory (PDL)

Down by the Delmarva bays, where the Sphagnum mosses alter wetland communities

5/11/2016

 
​If you take a drive along the Eastern Shore of Maryland, you will likely pass many wetlands. Called Delmarva bays, these wetlands are seasonal, meaning that they dry out every summer. Consequently, fish cannot survive in most of these wetlands, and the food webs are mainly composed of aquatic invertebrates. Delmarva bays have become the focus of recent restoration efforts under organizations such as the Nature Conservancy. Over the years, many of these wetlands have been impaired or destroyed by agricultural activity. This is problematic, as Delmarva bays perform many important ecosystem services, such as retaining nutrients that would otherwise enter the Chesapeake Bay. A central goal of restoration efforts is to reestablish these services. As PhD candidate, Ellie Spadafora of the Lamp Lab learned, however, determining the success of wetland restoration can depend a lot on when and how you measure it.

Spadafora first wanted to examine the community level changes between three types of wetlands: natural, rehabilitated, and created. The rehabilitated and created wetlands differed in that the rehabilitated wetland had once been a wetland in the past while the created wetland was constructed in a forested depression. The created and rehabilitated wetlands were restored and built, respectively, in 2003, and monitoring of invertebrate populations began soon after. How much had they changed, and begun to resemble the historic wetland, from 2003 until the start of her research in 2012? Visually, the restored wetlands looked much healthier after 9 years, as seen in the comparison in figures 1 and 2. 
Picture
Do these visual changes mean anything for the biological composition of the wetlands? Spadafora compared the aquatic invertebrates sampled in the wetlands over time and found some encouraging results. The most abundant invertebrate in the natural wetland across all years was a freshwater isopod, Asellus. The created wetland, in contrast, had non-biting midge larvae (Family Chironomidae) in abundance every year. The rehabilitated wetland was the most interesting. Although in its earlier years the invertebrate community was dominated by midge larvae, by 2012 Asellus accounted for the majority of the specimens. This may suggest that if the goal of a wetland restoration project is to achieve similar characteristics to natural wetlands, rehabilitating former wetlands may be a better plan than creating new ones. However, her results did indicate that success cannot necessarily be determined immediately following restoration. Longer term monitoring may be needed to see improvements.
So what was different about the rehabilitated and created wetlands? Spadafora hypothesized it may have something to do with a moss. Naturally occurring sphagnum moss (figure 3) may be most recognizable as a base for floral arrangements, but it also serves as an important ecosystem engineer by providing habitat structure for aquatic invertebrates, such as isopods and predaceous diving beetles (Family Dytiscidae, figure 4). Sphagnum also appeared in the rehabilitated wetland in 2009, which is the time period where isopods became dominant in the invertebrate community. To test her theory that sphagnum influences invertebrate communities, she expanded her study to include twenty Delmarva Bays (ten with sphagnum, ten without) and shifted her taxonomic focus to Dytiscid beetles. Although not as abundant as the isopods, these Dytiscid beetles are crucial for Delmarva bay ecosystems because, in the absence of fish, they are one of the top predators. If sphagnum mosses were influencing beetle diversity, she expected to see more species of beetles in the sphagnum wetlands. Indeed, beetle diversity was higher in the moss-containing wetlands, and interestingly some species were only found in either the sphagnum or non-sphagnum sites. 
Picture
Spadafora’s research provides us with some excellent takeaways regarding wetland restoration. In addition to making the rehabilitated wetland look more like a genuine Delmarva bay, the sphagnum may also allow it to support a larger array of aquatic insects and maintain diversity of a disappearing habitat type.
For more information, check out Ellie Spadafora’s recent publication in Restoration Ecology.
 
About the author:
Becca Wilson is a PhD candidate in the Lamp Lab. She studies the spatial distribution and societal impacts of nuisance black flies in western Maryland.

Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    Awards
    Colloquium
    Faculty Spotlight
    Fall 2013 Colloquium
    Fall 2014 Colloquium
    Fall 2015 Colloquium
    Fall 2016 Colloquium
    Featured
    Innovation
    News
    Publications
    Science Projects
    SESYNC
    Spring 2014 Colloquium
    Spring 2015 Colloquium
    Spring 2016 Colloquium
    Talks
    Undergraduate

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    RSS Feed

Picture
Picture
Picture
Department of Entomology 
University of Maryland 
4112 Plant Sciences Building 
College Park, MD 20742-4454
USA

Telephone: 301.405.3911 
Fax: 301.314.9290
Picture
Web Accessibility
  • About
    • At a Glance
    • Welcome
    • Code of Conduct
    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion >
      • DEI Working Group
      • Resources
    • Departmental History
    • For Alumni
    • Support Entomology >
      • Steinhauer Scholarship Fund
    • Contact >
      • Directions
  • News
    • News
    • Seminar Blog
    • Seminar Schedule
    • Awards
  • People
    • Faculty
    • Post Docs
    • Students
    • Staff
    • Alumni
    • For PI/Faculty
    • Proposal Resources
  • Academics
    • Graduate >
      • Admissions
      • MS Degree Requirements
      • PhD Degree Requirements
      • Graduate Student Resources
      • Forms for Grad Students
      • Financial Assistance
      • Award & Funding Opportunities
      • Entomology Student Organization
    • Online Masters in Applied Entomology
    • Undergraduate >
      • Entomology Minor
      • Honors Program
  • Research
    • IPM & Biological Control of Agricultural, Urban & Forest Pests
    • Ecology, Conservation, Restoration, Climate Change >
      • Pollinator Science and Apiculture
    • Evolution, Systematics and Evo-Devo
    • Genetics & Genomics and Medical Entomology
  • Extension/Outreach
    • Educational Outreach
    • Insect Camp
    • Insect Drawings
    • Insect Identification
    • Pesticide Education and Assessment Program
    • Plant Diagnostic Laboratory (PDL)