Moths (Lepidoptera)
Project Investigator
Keith Summerville, Drake University, (515) 271-2265, keith.summerville@drake.edu
Dr. Keith Summerville studies how human activities and environmental changes shape moth populations within the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment. His research focuses on testing how timber harvesting, prescribed fires, weather shifts, and pest outbreaks influence forest moth communities. Based on 15 years of data, Dr. Summerville found that moth populations show strong resilience to timber harvests when some mature trees are left standing and unharvested forest stays adjacent to managed areas. However, extreme weather events like late May frosts and summer droughts combine with high-volume logging to create simplified moth communities dominated by generalist species, while low-intensity understory fires have very little impact. To collect specimens, researchers deployed 20 battery-powered light traps for five nights each summer from 2007 through 2022.
Key Papers:
- Summerville, K.S., D.Courard-Hauri and M.M.Dupont. 2009. The legacy of timber harvest: Do patterns of species dominance suggest recovery of Lepidopteran communities in managed hardwood stands? Forest Ecology and Management, 259(1): 8-13.
- Summerville, K.S., M.M.Dupont, A.V.Johnson and R.L.Krehbiel. 2008. Spatial structure of forest Lepidopteran communities in oak hickory forests of Indiana. Environmental Entomology, 37(5): 1224-1230.
- Summerville, K.S. 2013. Forest lepidopteran communities are more resilient to shelterwood harvest compared to more intensive logging regimes. Ecological Applications, 23(5): 1101-1112.
- Summerville, K.S., J.L. Lane and D. Courard-Hauri. 2013. Stability in forest lepidopteran communities: how sensitive are pest species to experimental forest management. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 6:(3)265-275.
- Summerville, K.S. and R.J. Marquis. 2017. Comparing the responses of larval and adult lepidopteran communities to timber harvest using long-term, landscape-scale studies in oak-hickory forests. Forest Ecology and Management http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2016.08.050