%0 Journal Article
%T Periodical cicada emergence resource pulse tracks forest expansion in a tallgrass prairie landscape
%A Alex Bell
%A Brent L. Brock
%A Bruce A. Snyder
%A Clinton K. Meyer
%A Mac A. Callaham
%A Matt R. Whiles
%A Sophia Bonjour
%J Ecosphere - Wiley Online Library
%D 2019
%R https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2779
%X Understanding factors that influence resource pulses is an important aspect of ecosystem ecology. We quantified below©\ to aboveground energy and nutrient fluxes during the 2015 periodical cicada emergence from forest habitats in a tallgrass prairie matrix and compared results to our prior studies of the 1998 emergence in the same watershed. We estimated 35.2 million cicadas emerged across 159 ha in 2015, almost 2ˇÁ more than the 19.6 million across 98 ha in 1998. The 2015 emergence resulted in below©\ to aboveground fluxes of 9.4 metric tons of ash©\free dry mass and 1.12 metric tons of N, both ~2ˇÁ greater than 1998. This corresponds to 59 kg C/ha and 7 kg N/ha in and adjacent to forested areas in 2015. Increased emergence in 2015 was a result of spatial expansion of cicadas, not higher densities. Periodical cicadas are expanding with forest habitats in this region. Cicadas expand into and oviposit in ~40% of available forest habitat during each emergence. Accordingly, we predict the 2032 emergence will span ~245 ha. Our study demonstrates how human alterations to a landscape, in this case forest expansion linked to fire suppression and reduced grazing, can alter the magnitude and extent of a resource pulse. Ecologists increasingly recognize the significance of linkages between ecosystems and the fluxes of energy and materials between them. These fluxes, or ecological subsidies, can be driven by physical processes such as water and air movements (e.g., Junk et al. 1989), or biological events such as insect emergences and animal migrations (Polis et al. 1997, Baxter et al. 2005). Energy and nutrients associated with subsidies can be significant to recipient systems, fueling productivity, and effects can cascade through food webs and into adjacent habitats. For example, Ben©\David et al. (1998) found that marine©\derived nutrients associated with salmon migrating from the ocean to streams were detectable in adjacent forests because of the movements of piscivorous predators that consumed salmon. Large, episodic events such as salmon migrations and other events where ephemeral resources become abundant are resource pulses, with associated energy and nutrient subsidies affecting multiple trophic levels and eliciting both top©\down and bottom©\up cascading effects (Nowlin et al. 2008, Yang et al. 2008). The appearance of adult periodical cicadas is among the most spectacular insect emergence events and represents classic examples of resource pulses. Periodical cicadas are relatively large insects, and their massive, synchronized emergences every 13 or 17 yr provide
%U https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2779