Abstract

In forest communities, terrestrial arthropods participate in various ecosystem functions, such as decomposition, predation and herbivory, pollination, and seed dispersal. Historically, many North American forests have been cleared for agricultural use and later regenerated into secondary forests. While the recolonization of plant communities in secondary forests is well documented, less is known about how forest floor arthropod communities recover from anthropogenic disturbance. To address this, we conducted a large natural experiment to examine if the abundance and biomass of different arthropod groups were impacted by historical land use change. We sampled arthropods using pitfall traps in 20 paired remnant and secondary forests across three ecoregions in the Northeast, and specimens were then sorted into six broad taxonomic groups: Formicidae, Coleoptera, Arachnida, Collembola, Diploda, and Diptera. First, we compared total abundance and abundance by taxonomic group between land use history category and ecoregion. We then estimated total biomass and biomass of taxonomic groups by photographing samples and using ImageJ to quantify surface area and average particle size. Preliminarily, our results suggest that arthropod abundance and biomass are significantly higher in remnant forests than in secondary forests, with varying degrees of differences by taxonomic group. Additionally, biomass of different taxonomic groups varied by ecoregion, indicating that different groups are sensitive to differences in environmental conditions. Overall, land use history has a significant impact on arthropod communities. A growing understanding of how human disturbance affects key taxonomic groups is vital to developing future land use practices that promote forest health.