"The implications of these results for conservation and forest management relate to time between harvests. Adequate conservation of the insect fauna in forests of long-lived trees such as white oak may require longer time periods between harvests at the same location (extended rotation time) for some portion of the total forested landscape than is prescribed by current silvicultural practice. ...This study indicated that oak herbivore species richness and abundance continued to increase for 200 years beyond the current rotation period, and that unique communities existed in older forests (122-313 yr) compared to intermediate age forests (49-111 yr)."

J.M. Jeffries. 2004. Community composition, species richness, and abundance of oak herbivore insects in a chronoseries of temperate forests. Masters Thesis. University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Saint Louis University Graduate Research on Pioneer Forest Reports on Unique Communities in Older Forests.

(Saint Louis, Mo, December 2004). June Jeffries completed her Masters Thesis at Saint Louis University in December 2004. The title of her research project was 'Community Composition, Species Richness, and Abundance of Oak Herbivore Insects in a chronoseries of temperate forests.' Part of her research was conducted on Pioneer Forest at Current River Natural Area.

Jeffries’ work provides companion research to that reported by Robert Marquis at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (Marquis and Le Conff in 1997 and then Marquis and others 2002) regarding insect · herbivore diversity and abundance. Those results indicated increasing rates of diversity and abundance as the age of Missouri Ozark forests increased. The difference in age from their study was only 25 years. Jeffries’ interesting addition of Current River Natural Area as a sampling site has provided a much longer chronoseries, extending her analysis beyond 300 years.

Her results provide strong evidence that increasing structural diversity within forests influences herbivore success. Older forests are not as dense and therefore provide a quite different forest architecture from their canopy layers, multiple diameter classes, shrubs, and forest floor debris. Jeffries discusses the implications for conservation suggesting modifications in forest management which would extend rotation periods for even-aged forests and leave more, larger diameter trees uncut.

A manuscript from this research effort has been accepted for publication in the June 2006 issue of the journal Ecological Applications.

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