Arctic insect emergence timing and composition differs across thaw ponds of varying morphology

ABSTRACT

Freshwater ponds provide habitats for aquatic insects that emerge and subsidize consumers in terrestrial ecosystems. In the Arctic, insects provide an important seasonal source of energy to birds that breed and rear young on the tundra. The abundance and timing of insect emergence from arctic thaw ponds is poorly understood, but understanding these fluxes is important, given the role of insects in food webs and current rates of environmental change at high latitudes. We aimed to evaluate emerging insect communities from thaw ponds with different morphologies, identify environmental covariates influencing insect composition, and describe temporal changes in insect abundance. We collected environmental information and insects that emerged over two growing seasons and examined the phenology and taxonomic composition of insects arising from different pond classes: low centered polygon, small coalescent, large coalescent, and trough ponds. Our findings indicated no differences in the timing of total emergence across ponds of varying morphology. Community dissimilarity was primarily associated with center or margin habitat and variables that differed strongly among pond classes. These insects, which provide important provisions for various species of birds, are likely to experience changes in emergence phenology and composition due to ongoing, rapid warming in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Arctic
• insect
• phenology
• subsidy
• thaw pond

Acknowledgments

We thank numerous individuals, notably Laura Garey, Eric Torvinen, Constance Johnson, Mark Gilbertson, Megan Zarzicki, and Chris Gurney for help in the field and long hours counting bugs. We thank Gordon Brower and commissioners of the North Slope Borough Planning and Community Services Department and the North Slope Borough, Department of Wildlife Management for their assistance and feedback on this research. We also thank the members of the NPR-A Subsistence Advisory Panel for their comments on how to best conduct our work in the Arctic to reduce disturbance to wildlife and subsistence activities. We thank the Arctic field office of the Bureau of Land Management for logistical and technical support. Thank you to Wendy Monk for providing comment on an early version of this article. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for providing thoughtful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by the Changing Arctic Ecosystem Initiative supported by the Wildlife program of the USGS Ecosystem Mission Area. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. The authors report no competing interest.