Search for: All records

Leaf litter arthropods are important components of the food web in forests, and their presence and diversity can provide information on forest health. There has been very little documentation of the leaf litter arthropods in Hawaiian forest ecosystems. This technical report is a photographic guide to some common arthropods collected from forest leaf litter at the Liko Nā Pilina Hybrid Ecosystems Project study site, a lowland wet forest in Hilo, Island of Hawaiʻi, USA. Leaf litter samples were collected from plots of invaded and experimental restoration communities using two complementary methods (litterbags and quadrats), and arthropods were extracted using Berlese funnels. The field site contained many morphospecies that were rare and locally distributed across plots, and only a few that were very common and widely distributed. The majority of the morphospecies identified were mites. This photoguide is designed to help identify arthropods found in plant litter in Hawaiian lowland forests and it may assist with research and education efforts concerned with the diversity, ecology, or conservation of litter arthropods across the Hawaiian archipelago and other Pacific islands. 

This data release includes metadata and tabular data that documents counts of arthropods collected from forest litter at the Liko Nā Pilina study site located on the Keaukaha Military Reservation, Hilo, Hawai‘i. These data are represented in three files: 1) a description of the date and location for each sample, 2) classification for all taxa, and 3) counts of each taxon in each sample. The classification file is in lieu of listing all taxa in the Taxonomic Classification section of the metadata files. Arthropods were extracted from litterbags containing leaves from dominant plant species within the study site and from litter collected in randomly placed quadrats. Samples were obtained after 1, 2, 4 and 6 months during 28 August 2019 - 28 January 2020. Samples were processed in the lab during 1 March 2020 - 31 December 2022, and taxa identified during 1 April - 31 December 2023. Quantitative data are only included for the litterbag samples. Overall, 319 arthropod taxa are included in this data release. 

Globalization has undeniably impacted the Earth’s ecosystems, but it has also influenced how we think about natural systems. Three fourths of the world’s forests are now altered by human activity, which challenges our concepts of native ecosystems. The dichotomies of pristine vs. disturbed as well as our view of native and non-native species, have blurred; allowing us to acknowledge new paradigms about how humans and nature interact. We now understand that the use of militaristic language to define the perceived role of a plant species is holding us back from the fact that novel systems (new combinations of all species) can often provide valuable ecosystem services (i.e., water, carbon, nutrients, cultural, and recreation) for creatures (including humans). In reality, ecosystems exist in a gradient from native to intensely managed – and “non-nativeness” is not always a sign of a species having negative effects. In fact, there are many contemporary examples of non-native species providing critical habitat for endangered species or preventing erosion in human-disturbed watersheds. For example, of the 8,000–10,000 non-native species introduced to Hawai‘i, less than 10% of these are self-sustaining and 90 of those pose a danger to native biota and are considered invasive. In this paper, we explore the native/non-native binary, the impacts of globalization and the political language of invasion through the lens of conservation biology and sociology with a tropical island perspective. This lens gives us the opportunity to offer a place-based approach toward the use of empirical observation of novel species interactions that may help in evaluating management strategies that support biodiversity and ecosystem services. Finally, we offer a first attempt at conceptualizing a site-specific approach to develop “metrics of belonging” within an ecosystem. 

Abstract Many degraded ecosystems have altered nutrient dynamics due to invaders’ possessing a suite of traits that allow them to both outcompete native species and alter the environment. In ecosystems where invasive species have increased nutrient turnover rates, it can be difficult to reduce nutrient availability. This study examined whether a functional trait‐based restoration approach involving the planting of species with conservative nutrient‐use traits could slow rates of nutrient cycling and consequently reduce rates of invasion. We examined a functional trait restoration initiative in a heavily invaded lowland wet forest site in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. Native and introduced species were chosen to create four experimental hybrid forest communities, in comparison to the invaded forest, with a factorial design in which communities varied in rates of carbon turnover (slow or moderate [SLOW, MOD]), and in the relationship of species in trait space (redundant or complementary [RED, COMP]). After the first 5 years, we evaluated community‐level outcomes related to nutrient cycling: carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) via litterfall, litter decomposition, and outplant productivity and rates of invasion. We found that (1) regardless of treatment, the experimental communities had low rates of nutrient cycling through litterfall relative to the invaded reference forest, (2) the MOD communities had greater nutrient release via litterfall than the SLOW communities, (3) introduced species had greater nutrient release than native species in the two MOD experimental communities, and (4) within treatments, there was a positive relationship between nutrient levels and outplant basal area, but outplant basal area was negatively associated with rates of invasion. The negative relationships among basal area and weed invasion, particularly for the two COMP treatments, suggest species existing in different parts of trait space may help confer some degree of invasion resistance. The diversification of trait space was facilitated by the use of introduced species, a new concept in Hawaiian forest management. Although challenges remain in endeavors to restore this heavily degraded ecosystem, this study provides evidence that functional trait‐based restoration approaches using carefully crafted hybrid communities can reduce rates of nutrient cycling and invasion in order to reach management goals.