Wildfire Impacts on Red Imported Fire Ant Captures Around Forest Ponds in the Lost Pines Ecoregion of Texas

Abstract

The impacts of high-intensity wildfires on red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta abundances in forest systems are currently unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a high-intensity wildfire around pond edges on red imported fire ant captures in the Lost Pines ecoregion of Texas, which provides habitat for most of the remaining endangered Houston toads Bufo houstonensis. The red imported fire ant is a known predator of Houston toads, and thus there is interest in understanding the potential and realized impacts of this species on Houston toad survivorship. Our results suggest the wildfire did not directly impact captures-per-unit-effort, but it had indirect positive impacts through reductions in canopy cover due to overstory tree mortality. The results of this study indicate that both area occupied by red imported fire ants and site-specific red imported fire ant densities could increase dramatically in the Lost Pines as a result of the wildfire and subsequent human-based recovery efforts.

Documenting Extinction in Real Time: Decline of the Houston Toad on a Primary Recovery Site

“…To further understand factors that are contributing to the decline of Houston toad populations, we are currently investigating the impacts of annual weather variability and the long-term climate trend on Houston toad survival and reproduction using simulation modeling, the influence of habitat patch size and connectivity on site occupancy using historical imagery and site records, and the influence of red imported fire ants Solenopsis invicta on terrestrial juvenile and adult Houston toad survival using field observations (see initial studies by Brown et al 2012Brown et al , 2013a. Although negative short-term wildfire effects on Houston toad population dynamics are not apparent, potential medium-and longterm effects are possible, because negative wildfire impacts can take 6 y or more to become evident (Hossack et al 2013), and impacts can be related to an assortment of factors (reviewed in Pilliod et al 2003).…”

Evidence of facultative scavenging by Southern Leopard Frog (Rana sphenocephala) larvae

“…We constructed a phylogeny of the resident anuran species occurring on the Griffith League Ranch (Brown et al 2011) to confirm the taxonomic identity of the scavenging larva. We downloaded cytb sequence data from GenBank for R. sphenocephala Gissi et al 2006;Zhang et al 2013), was likewise downloaded from GenBank.…”