Lunch & Learn | Quantifying the effects of wildfire on native pollinator communities in Ponderosa Pine forests

Over the last century, historical wildfire regimes have shifted due to climate change, the exclusion of Indigenous fire stewards, and land management philosophies. As a result of these pressures, forests have experienced increases in fuel buildup that threatens dry forest resilience across western North America. Within post-fire landscapes, pollination is critical for vegetation recovery and ecosystem health. We used field based and molecular methods to evaluate the effects of fire reintroduction on bee community composition across a temporal range of one to nine years post-fire, and in an unburned control, in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

Autumn Maust is a Research Scientist in the Biology Department at the University of Washington. Broadly, her research explores the effects of climate-driven disturbance on native insect pollinator communities. She uses both field based and molecular methods to quantify shifts in pollinator community composition, fitness, and plant-pollinator networks over spatial and temporal scales.