Fires and Clear-Cuttings as Local Areas of Arthropod Diversity in Polar Regions: Khibiny Mountains
Zenkova I.V. Ditts A.A. Shtabrovskaya I.M. Nekhaeva A.A.
June 2024Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
Fire
2024#7Issue 6
The well-known phenomenon of attracting untypical animals to disturbed territories has been poorly investigated in the polar mountains. We studied arthropod diversity in self-healing industrial clear-cuts and burn areas in the Khibiny Mountains, Kola Polar region. Fieldworks were conducted at four sites, including a control mountain taiga forest and its three transformed variants: burnt forest, uncleared clear-cut, and twice-disturbed burnt clear-cut. Arthropods were collected using formalin traps 2–3, 5–6, and 8–9 years after industrial deforestation in 2012 and an extensive grass-roots fire in 2013. Out of 124 identified species (spiders—61; ground beetles—41; and rove beetles—22), 79 (or 64%) were collected in disturbed, primarily burned areas and were absent in control forest. We note ten species of rove beetles, nine species of ground beetles, and eight species of spiders for the first time in the well-studied arthropod fauna of the Khibiny Mts. We found that grass-root fires transform the soil vegetation covers in the polar mountain forests more powerfully in comparison with extensive deforestation and attract a greater diversity of arthropods with different preferences, enriching the fauna of the polar mountains and the Subarctic region as a whole. The attraction effect persists for, at least, a decade after the violations.
clear-cuttings , ecological monitoring , fires , ground beetles , Khibiny Mountains , northern taiga , rove beetles , self-healing , spiders , uncommon species
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Kola Science Center, Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, Apatity, 184209, Russian Federation
Komi Scientific Centre, Ural Branch, Institute of Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Syktyvkar, 167982, Russian Federation
A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119071, Russian Federation
Institute of Zoology RK, Almaty, 050060, Kazakhstan
Kola Science Center
Komi Scientific Centre
A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution
Institute of Zoology RK
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