Steven Katovich

Physical effects of weather events on the abundance and diversity of insects in North American forests

We summarize the effects of major weather events such as ice storms, wind storms, and flooding on the abundance and diversity of terrestrial forest insects and their allies. This synthesis indicates that weather events influence both spatial and temporal patterns of forests and insect communities in North American landscapes. The Atlantic and Pacific oceanic sides of the continent are relatively more susceptible to ice and wind storms, respectively. There have been more studies and reports on the responses of forest insects to wind storms, and on economically important subcortical insects than on gall-forming, foliage-feeding, fungal-feeding, litter-dwelling, pollinating, parasitizing, predaceous, root-feeding, and sap-feeding insects. Weather events positively affect populations of subcortical insect species, and impact their colonization patterns and dynamics. Species belonging to genera such as Dendroctonus (Scolytidae) and Monochamus (Cerambycidae) may sometimes cause economic damage by colonizing res...