Diane M. Debinski

Montana State University | MSU · Ecology Department

Insects serve as ecosystem engineers in grasslands. Their impacts are comparable in scale to those of mammals, but because they are so much smaller, their roles and influences are not always as obvious. The roles that insects play in grasslands are as diverse as Class Insecta itself, including herbivory, pollination, seed dispersal, soil profile mo...

Pollinating insects provide vital ecosystem services and are facing global declines and habitat loss. Roadsides are increasingly regarded as important potential areas for enhancing pollinator habitat. Understanding which roadsides best support pollinators—and why—is essential to helping locate and prioritize pollinator conservation efforts across r...

Many professions necessitate a graduate‐level education, and research conducted by graduate students is integral in many fields, particularly those in the life science programs like ecology and environmental sciences. However, practices for recruiting and selecting graduate students are inconsistent among and within institutions. Although some inst...

Climate change is shifting phenology globally, altering when and how species respond to environmental cues such as temperature and the timing of snowmelt. These shifts may result in phenological mismatches among interacting species, creating cascading effects on community and ecosystem dynamics. Using passive warming structures and snow removal, we...

Nectar production may be a point of sensitivity that can help link primary and secondary trophic responses to climate shifts, and is therefore important to our understanding of ecosystem responses. We evaluated the nectar response of two widespread native forbs, Balsamorhiza sagittata and Eriogonum umbellatum, to experimental warming in a high‐elev...

Context Vegetation quantity and quality influence the degree to which large grazers shape grassland structural heterogeneity. Invasive plants threaten the function of cross-scale interactions that exist when multi-scale effects such as fire and grazing interplay to form patterns of grassland structural heterogeneity. Objectives We investigated how...

Characterizing both genetic and functional connectivity is of paramount concern in the face of ongoing environmental change. Approaches combining both landscape genetic and graph theoretic methodologies have shown promise in allowing for simultaneous identification of strong and vulnerable populations, and the landscape factors that may inhibit or...

Invasive grasses reduce habitat quality for multiple taxa and can negatively impact forage quality for livestock. Large-scale experimental studies are needed to inform more effective grassland restoration that is grounded in practice. To this end, we studied the control of a common but highly invasive cool-season grass using a landscape-scale exper...

Spatially patchy fire creates landscape-level diversity that in turn stabilizes several rangeland ecosystem services, including forage production and habitat availability. To enhance biodiversity and livestock production, efforts are underway to restore fire regimes in rangelands throughout the Great Plains. However, invasive species such as tall f...

Tall fescue (Schedonurus arundinaceus), an exotic invasive grass in North America, can associate with a fungal endophyte that causes livestock toxicity. Native prairies are frequently managed with interactive fire and grazing, yet little is known regarding tall fescue's endophytic and toxicological responses. From 2012 to 2014, we applied patch-bur...

Native pollinators are important for providing vital services in agroecosystems; however, their numbers are declining globally. Bees are the most efficient and diverse members of the pollinator community; therefore, it is imperative that management strategies be implemented that positively affect bee community composition and health. Here, we test...

Woody encroachment can convert grasslands and savannas to shrublands and woodlands, so understanding the processes which regulate woody encroachment is necessary to conserve or restore these ecosystems. We hypothesized that recreating the fire–grazing interaction would limit woody encroachment because focal grazing increases fuel accumulation on un...

Tallgrass prairie ecosystems in North America are heavily degraded and require effective restoration strategies if prairie specialist taxa are to be preserved. One common management tool used to restore grassland is the application of a seed-mix of native prairie plant species. While this technique is effective in the short-term, it is critical tha...

Context Plant invasions of native ecosystems are one of the main causes of declines in biodiversity via system-simplification. Restoring native biodiversity can be particularly challenging in landscapes where invasive species have become dominant and where a new set of feedbacks reinforce an invaded state and preclude restoration actions. We lack a...

Monarch butterfly overwintering numbers have declined over the past 20 years. Restoring habitat that includes milkweeds, the only host plants for larval monarch butterflies, is necessary to increase monarch numbers within the breeding range. The value of different milkweed species for restoration will depend, in part, on the extent to which they ar...

Context Humans have altered grasslands in recent decades through crop conversion, woody encroachment, and plant invasions. Concurrently, grassland birds have experienced range-wide declines. Studies have reported effects of plant invasions and land conversion on nest ecology, but few have assessed relative impacts of these changes. Objectives We c...

Loss of biodiversity due to anthropogenic factors, such as climate change and habitat conversion or loss, is among the largest problems affecting many native ecosystems today. Declines in plant diversity can often have detrimental effects on other forms of biodiversity through cascading trophic systems and negatively impact large-scale ecosystem pr...

Estimating occupancy patterns and identifying vegetation characteristics that influence the presence of butterfly species are essential approaches needed for determining how habitat changes may affect butterfly populations in the future. The montane butterfly species, Parnassius clodius, was investigated to identify patterns of occupancy relating t...

Over the past two decades, the population of monarch butterflies east of the Rocky Mountains has experienced a significant decline in overwintering numbers. Habitat restoration that includes planting milkweeds is essential to boost monarch numbers within the breeding range. Milkweeds are the only host plants for larval monarch butterflies, but fema...

The population of monarch butterflies east of the Rocky Mountains has experienced a significant decline over the past 20 yr. In order to increase monarch numbers in the breeding range, habitat restoration that includes planting milkweed plants is essential. Milkweeds in the genus Asclepias and Cynanchum are the only host plants for larval monarch b...

Over the past two decades, the population of monarch butterflies east of the Rocky Mountains has experienced a significant decline. Habitat restoration that includes milkweed plants is crucial to boost population numbers in the breeding range. Monarch butterfly larvae use milkweeds as their only host plant, but larval performance on different milkw...

List of 33 plant species modeled and the number of training samples used to build each model. The test AUC is a measure of model performance at ±1 SD.

The full set of results for all 33 modeled plant species using the A1B and A2 climate scenarios.

Grassland loss has been extensive worldwide, endangering the associated biodiversity and human well-being that are both dependent on these ecosystems. Ecologists have developed approaches to restore grassland communities and many have been successful, particularly where soils are rich, precipitation is abundant, and seeds of native plant species ca...

Grassland loss has been extensive worldwide, endangering the associated biodiversity and human well-being that are both dependent on these ecosystems. Ecologists have developed approaches to restore grassland communities and many have been successful, particularly where soils are rich, precipitation is abundant, and seeds of native plant species ca...

Climate change can have a broad range of effects on ecosystems and organisms, and early responses may include shifts in vegetation phenology and productivity that may not coincide with the energetics and forage timing of higher trophic levels. We evaluated phenology, annual height growth, and foliar frost responses of forbs to a factorial experimen...

We assessed local horn fly (Haematobia irritans L.) and face fly (Musca autumnalis De Geer) communities on cattle in 2012 and 2013 relative to vegetation and climate data to understand how parasitism of cattle is influenced by change in climate and vegetation structure. We compared heterogeneity management using spatially and temporally discrete fi...

Numerous species are responding to warming climate by shifting distributions northward and poleward. Butterflies have been instrumental in documenting such climate-induced range shifts. Parnassius clodius is a montane butterfly found throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in metapopulations of disconnected dry, gravelly sagebrush meadows. Dis...

In grasslands, overgrazing by domestic livestock, fertilization, and introduction of exotic forage species leads to plant communities consisting of a mixture of native and exotic species. These degraded grasslands present a problem for land managers, farmers, and restoration ecologists concerned with improving biodiversity while continuing to use t...

Average percent cover for each of the six functional groups at each site by year. Abbreviations are as follows, CSG = cool-season grasses (C3), Fescue = tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceus (Schreb.) Dumort., nom. cons.), Forbs = non-leguminous forbs, Legumes = leguminous forbs, Woody = woody vegetation, WSG = warm-season grasses (C4). (DOCX)

Total abundance of the 14 most common butterfly species for each site by year. Total abundance is the sum of all butterflies counted from six transects within each site in each year. (DOCX)

In North America, the loss of habitat heterogeneity resulting from homogeneous livestock grazing is one factor contributing to steep population declines of many grassland bird species. Patch-burn grazing is a management technique that uses historic grassland disturbance as a model to create heterogeneous grassland composition and structure, providi...

Grasslands provide important resources for pollinators in agricultural landscapes. Managing grasslands with fire and grazing has the potential to benefit plant and pollinator communities, though there is uncertainty about the ideal approach. We examined the relationships among burning and grazing regimes, plant communities, and Bombus species and A...

Ecological theory predicts that diversity decreases variability in ecosystem function. We predict that, at the landscape scale, spatial variability created by a mosaic of contrasting patches that differ in time-since-disturbance will decrease temporal variability in aboveground plant biomass. Using data from a multi-year study of seven grazed tallg...

Ecological theory predicts that diversity decreases variability in ecosystem function. We predict that, at the landscape scale, spatial variability created by a mosaic of contrasting patches that differ in time since disturbance will decrease temporal variability in aboveground plant biomass. Using data from a multi-year study of seven grazed tallg...

Ecological theory predicts that diversity decreases variability in ecosystem function. We predict that, at the landscape scale, spatial variability created by a mosaic of contrasting patches that differ in time since disturbance will decrease temporal variability in aboveground plant biomass. Using data from a multi-year study of seven grazed tallg...

Pollinators are declining globally, and this decline in ecosystem services threatens the stability of agricultural and natural systems. Pollinators depend on a diversity of floral resources that are primarily found in uncultivated areas of agro-ecosystems such as grasslands. Seasonal succession (the seasonal changes that occur in community composit...

After translocation a female greater prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus) traveled over 3988 km between 5 April 2013 and 20 June 2014. The bird traveled a mean distance of 21.5 km per day during the spring (median distance per day 22.2 km; range 0-115 km per day) moving through portions of four states. Nine other marked birds traveled a me...

Invasive, exotic grasses are increasing in tallgrass prairie and their dominance may be contributing to the decline of grassland butterflies through alterations in forage quality. Tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceus (Schreb.) Dumort.), an exotic grass covering millions of acres in the United States, can host a fungal endophyte, Epichloë coenophia...

Wind tunnel studies provide a valuable experimental approach that can be used to investigate the influence of specific environmental parameters and to make generalizations about insect behavior. In this study, we designed an experiment to test the sensitivity of butterflies to isolated environmental parameters in the context of understanding edge r...

We compared the influence of patch-burn grazing to traditional range management practices on abundance of the most economically injurious fly parasites of cattle. Horn flies (Haematobia irritans), face flies (Musca autumnalis), stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans), and horse flies (Tabanus spp.) were assessed at study locations in Oklahoma and Iowa,...

Predation is the leading cause of nest failure for many passerines and considerable effort is devoted to identifying the habitat characteristics and management practices that influence nest loss. The habitat components associated with nest loss are strongly influenced by the ecology of nest predators and differ among predator species as a result. N...

Climate change presents unique challenges to high-altitude, high-latitude flying insects such as butterflies, bees, and flies. Models predict that climate change will cause general range shifts toward the poles and high elevations (Parmesan and Yohe 2003, Root et al. 2003) and empirical studies confirm that these range shifts are occurring (Parmesa...

Symphoricarpos, a genus of the Caprifoliaceae family, consists of about 15 species of clonal deciduous shrubs in North America and 1 species endemic to China. In North American tallgrass prairie, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus (buckbrush) is the dominant shrub often forming large colonies via sexual and asexual reproductive mechanisms. Symphoricarpos s...

Soils contain much of Earth's terrestrial organic carbon but are sensitive to land-use. Rangelands are important to carbon dynamics and are among ecosystems most widely impacted by land-use. While common practices like grazing, fire, and tillage affect soil properties directly related to soil carbon dynamics, their magnitude and direction of change...

QuestionsHow abundant and diverse are sedges in upland tallgrass prairie? Are sedge communities associated with historical land use, abundance of an invasive species or different fire and grazing management regimes? How do sedge communities compare between reconstructed and intact grassland?LocationGrand River Grasslands; working tallgrass prairie...

Ecologists recognize that fire and herbivory are essential to maintaining habitat quality in grassland ecosystems. Prescribed fire and grazing are typically used on public reserves to increase biodiversity, improve grassland productivity, and control encroachment of woody plants. However, these tools, particularly prescribed fire, have not been wid...

Ecological effects of climate change can include advancement of spring events, shifts in species distribution patterns, and phenological changes. Studying these responses under field conditions can require decades of research. In 2010, we established an experimental field study designed to mimic the effects of predicted climate change using snow re...

Fire is a globally important ecosystem process, and invasive grass species generally increase fire spread by increasing the fuel load and continuity of native grassland fuelbeds. We suggest that invasive grasses that are photosynthetically active, while the native plant community is dormant reduce fire spread by introducing high-moisture, live vege...

Agricultural expansion has eliminated a high proportion of native land cover and severely degraded remaining native vegetation. Managers must determine where degradation is severe enough to merit restoration action, and what action, if any, is necessary. We report on grassland degraded by multiple factors, including grazing, soil disturbance, and e...

Background/Question/Methods In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, we need to better understand how ecological systems are being affected by changing conditions. To explore the consequences of increased temperatures and decreased snow cover, we conducted an experiment in a montane meadow ecosystem. Snow removal and passive heating we...

Background/Question/Methods Future climate trends in Iowa are expected to be highly variable, with increased temperatures and more variable rain events, leading to an increased probability of drought. These changing conditions may challenge the survival and viability of plant species, altering the composition of grassland communities. Such change...

Background/Question/Methods Scientists have called repeatedly for a broader conservation agenda that emphasizes not only protected areas but also the landscapes in which they are embedded. In response, we developed a conceptual model to guide the integration of conservation actions on reserves and private lands. Economic and conservation goals are...

Background/Question/Methods Although grassland insects evolved in the context of both grazing and fire, the appropriate use of grazing and fire in restoration and management of tallgrass prairie ecosystems has been debated among those concerned with protecting insect communities. We established an experiment to test insect responses to three gras...

Tallgrass prairies of central North America have experienced disturbances including fire and grazing for millennia. Little is known about the effects of these disturbances on prairie ants, even though ants are thought to play major roles in ecosystem maintenance. We implemented three management treatments on remnant and restored grassland tracts in...

Ecological fingerprints of climate change are becoming increasingly evident at broad geographical scales as measured by species range shifts and changes in phenology. However, finer-scale species-level responses to environmental fluctuations may also provide an important bellwether of impending future community responses. Here we examined changes i...

The abundance of Coenonympha haydenii along a hydrological gradient of six montane meadow habitat types decreased in response to drought. Changes in butterfly species distribution patterns were tracked for 11 years, of which eight were considered drought conditions. Species were categorized as having affinity for hydric or xeric habitats. The autho...

Natural resources managers are being asked to follow practices that accommodate for the impact of climate change on the ecosystems they manage, while global-ecosystems modelers aim to forecast future responses under different climate scenarios. However, the lack of scientific knowledge about short-term ecosystem responses to climate change has made...

The pristine, protected ecosystem of Grand Teton National Park (GRTE) is the ideal location to study the relationships between butterfly populations and the habitats on which these insects depend. Two montane meadow butterfly species, Parnassius clodius and Parnassius smintheus, were investigated in this study to identify patterns of habitat occupa...

Iowa State University’s graduate program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) requires that all graduate students participate in one field trip class during their graduate career. In this 2 credit class students learn about the ecology of the ecosystem that they will be visiting via seminars and lectures during the semester. The classroom te...

Previous work has shown exotic and native plant species richness are negatively correlated at fine spatial scales and positively correlated at broad spatial scales. Grazing and invasive plant species can influence plant species richness, but the effects of these disturbances across spatial scales remain untested. We collected species richness data...

Many grassland ecosystems are disturbance-dependent, having evolved under the pressures of fire and grazing. Restoring these disturbances can be controversial, particularly when valued resources are thought to be disturbance-sensitive. We tested the effects of fire and grazing on butterfly species richness and population density in an economically...

Background/Question/Methods Many rangelands evolved under an interactive disturbance regime in which herbivores respond to the spatial pattern of fire and create a patchy, heterogeneous landscape. Several studies report that spatially-heterogeneous fire and grazing create landscape-level vegetation heterogeneity (patch contrast) and increase rang...