Tues seminar

Sarah Dalrymple seminar.  Rick Karban’s excellent intro: “unlike the rest of these seminars, Sarah will tell us something new.”   “Sarah’s really out there.”  Also mentions TAC and art teaching.

Ants, Jeff pine & fire Fire suppression dramatic impacts.  Prescribed under story burns work!   ie Angora fire in Tahoe, 2007.  Discover rings of unburned  soil around base of tree, reducing damage…  undescribed!

More common in recently burned ( 30 yrs.  What makes the rings?  Many possible: stem melt, wind, litter fall?  Evidence for less fall, but not absence of needles…

Ants!  60% have an ant nest in the clearing (formica sybilla).  Association of ants & clearings only in burned areas.

Needle addition experiments.  Needles move farthest when nest in clearing.  Clearings w ants excluded similar motion to no nest but no exclosure.

Why should ants make clearings?  (Other ant sp. do this in fields-  pogonomyrmex sp).  Better foraging rate?  Detect, recruit, transport?  Time to detect bait; and recruit workers 2-3x faster (given nest).  No evidence of better transport time (caterpillar bate).