Sandra J. DeBano

Oregon State University | OSU · Department of Fisheries and Wildlife

Rangelands may offer valuable habitat for invertebrate wildlife, helping conserve ecologically and economically significant organisms, like native bees. In some systems, livestock may affect bees by consuming or trampling blooming plants that bees rely on for food. One potential way to reduce potential negative effects of livestock on bees is to de...

DNA metabarcoding of pollen is a useful tool for studying bee foraging ecology. However, several questions about this method remain unresolved, including the extent to which sequence read data is quantitative, which type of sequence count removal threshold to use and how that choice affects our ability to detect rare flower visits, and how sequence...

Questions Grassland degradation due to agriculture, changing fire regimes, and invasive species negatively affects forb communities. Conserving forbs and the services they provide requires a better understanding of their responses to interacting disturbances. Although fire and livestock grazing are important disturbances, their effect on forb commu...

With evidence of pollinator declines and an increasing focus on restoration, interest is growing in investigating floral resources for native bees. Although native bees forage on shrubs, few studies have explored the pollinator communities of native shrubs and none have examined shrub-pollinator interactions in riparian areas of the northwestern Un...

Many pollinator populations are experiencing declines, emphasizing the need for a better understanding of the complex relationship between bees and flowering plants. Using DNA metabarcoding to describe plant‐pollinator interactions eliminates many challenges associated with traditional methods and has the potential to reveal a more comprehensive un...

Habitat for pollinators is declining worldwide, threatening the health of both wild and agricultural ecosystems. Photovoltaic solar energy installation is booming, frequently near agricultural lands, where the land underneath ground-mounted photovoltaic panels is traditionally unused. Some solar developers and agriculturalists in the United States...

Grassland restoration in North America has intensified but its impact on major invertebrate groups, including spiders, is unclear. We studied three grassland locations in the Pacific Northwest, USA, to (1) describe variability in spider communities, (2) identify environmental variables that may underlie patterns in spider communities, and (3) deter...

Recent global declines of pollinator populations have highlighted the importance of pollinators, which are undervalued despite essential contributions to ecosystem services. To identify critical knowledge gaps about pollinators, we describe the state of knowledge about responses of pollinators and their foraging and nesting resources to historical...

In recent years restoration projects efforts in arid grasslands of the Pacific Northwest have increased; however, little is known about the bee communities in these areas or how restoration affects them. Native bees provide an essential ecosystem service through pollination of crops and native plants and understanding their response to restoration...

Rangeland invertebrates contribute greatly to biodiversity and provide important services including pollination, pest control, and nutrient cycling. As wildfire frequency increases across these areas of the United States, it is imperative to understand how these disturbances affect beneficial invertebrate communities. We examined bee (Hymenoptera),...

Effectively managing invaded grasslands requires a comprehensive understanding of effects of the invader on key species in those ecosystems. Annual grasses, such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), are significant invaders of grasslands in the western United States and their presence has been found to inf...

Climate change is expected to have strong effects on river systems and their biota. It is unlikely that a changing climate will be the only stressor on river systems to increase in the future. Human population growth will necessitate increased resource use including agricultural intensification. Understanding how climate change will interact with a...

Land managers face constant challenges when balancing multiple land use goals that include ensuring that keystone species are protected. As mindful stewards of our natural areas we aim to promote, secure, and enhance our natural landscapes and the species that make them their home. When we focus our efforts on protecting and promoting pollinators a...

Native bees are declining worldwide, but conserving or restoring their habitat requires a better understanding of bee-flower associations. High quality bee habitat includes flowers that provide pollen and nectar preferred by bees. However, little data exist about which plants are commonly used by bees in the Pacific Northwest, or whether bees prefe...

Spiders (Araneae) play key roles in ecosystems, not only as common and abundant generalist predators, but also as major contributors to biodiversity in many areas. In addition, due to their short generation times and high mobility, spiders respond rapidly to small changes in their environment, potentially making them useful indicators for restorati...

Many federal, state, and tribal agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations, have recently increased efforts to understand how natural areas can be managed to enhance native pollinators and the ecosystem services they provide. However, managing this important group must be balanced with other services that natural areas provide including hunting,...

Surface water abstraction from rivers for irrigated agriculture is one of the largest uses of freshwater resources in the world. Water abstraction has important impacts on the structure of riverine assemblages. However, little work has examined the chronic, season-long impacts on ecosystem functions. Invertebrate drift is an important ecosystem fun...

Climate change and agricultural intensification are two potential stressors that may pose significant threats to aquatic habitats in the inland Pacific Northwest over the next century. Climate change may impact running water through numerous pathways, including effects on water temperature and stream flow. In certain regions of the Pacific Northwes...

Silene spaldingii S. Watson (Spalding’s catchfly) is a threatened wildflower that relies on insect-mediated pollination. However, its pollination ecology is not well understood, particularly in the Zumwalt Prairie of northeastern Oregon, which contains the largest known S. spaldingii population. Our objectives were to: (1) describe the principal in...

In the western United States, up to 90% of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) is estimated to have disappeared since European settlement due to human activities. This loss poses a significant threat to many forms of biodiversity associated with aspen, including plants, birds, and mammals. However, no work has investigated native bee diversi...

Background/Question/Methods Livestock graze the majority of North American grasslands and livestock production is an important contributor to many rural economies. Developing sustainable grazing practices for public and private grasslands depends on a comprehensive understanding of how livestock grazing intensity affects biodiversity and ecologic...

Soil properties that influence the capacity for infiltration and moisture retention are important determinants of rangeland productivity. Monitoring effects of grazing on dynamic soil properties can assist managers with stocking rate decisions, particularly if monitoring takes into account environmental variability associated with inherent soil mor...

River reaches are often subject to multiple co-occurring anthropogenic stressors. Disentangling the relative impacts of different stressors is important in developing river management strategies. Bio-assessments using taxonomically based metrics (e.g. taxa richness and diversity) are frequently used as a means of determining the impact of stressors...

Rangelands are significant providers of ecosystem services in agroecosystems world-wide. Yet few studies have investigated how different intensities of livestock grazing impact one important provider of these ecosystem services-native bees. We conducted the first large-scale manipulative study on the effect of a gradient of livestock grazing intens...

Abstract Native bees are important ecologically and economically because their role as pollinators fulfills a vital ecosystem service. Pollinators are declining due to various factors, including habitat degradation and destruction. Grasslands, an important habitat for native bees, are particularly vulnerable. One highly imperiled and understudied g...

Small, low-head diversion dams are capable of withdrawing much of the flow of a river, often resulting in elevated water temperatures. Accelerated growth and development of aquatic invertebrates has been demonstrated in warmer temperatures, suggesting that the timing of insect emergence and adult body size may be significantly altered by water with...

Biotic interactions influence the distribution and abundance of lotic organisms at multiple spatial scales. At small scales, intra- and interspecific competition for refugia from high flows and predation can affect the micro-distribution of lotic organisms. The abiotic environment, such as water temperature, can have important impacts on lotic orga...

Background/Question/Methods Developing sustainable grazing practices for public and private lands depends on a comprehensive understanding of how livestock grazing intensity affects biodiversity and ecological function of many taxa, including invertebrates. Although invertebrates are the most diverse animal group and play significant roles in man...

Background/Question/Methods Livestock grazing is a widespread land use in western North America, which may impact native bees by affecting floral and nesting resources. Native bees are considered to be one of the most important pollinators. However, few studies have investigated how livestock grazing impacts native bees in western North America....

Background/Question/Methods Silene spaldingii (Spalding’s catchfly) is a threatened wildflower of the Caryophyllaceae family. Insect-mediated cross-pollination is critical to maintaining viable populations of this species, as fitness of plants decreases drastically when they are denied insect pollination services. Little is known of the primary p...

Background/Question/Methods Summer water withdrawal for irrigated agriculture is a leading use of surface water throughout the world. Water withdrawals have been found to have important impacts on the density and composition of macroinvertebrate benthic assemblages. However, little work has examined the impact of water withdrawals on the function...

Cultural practices and insecticide treatments and combinations were evaluated for effect on tuber damage by potato tuberworm, Phthorimaea operculella (Zeller) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) in the Columbia basin of eastern Oregon and Washington. A range of intervals between initial application of several insecticides and vine-kill were tested to determ...

Significant progress has been made in developing subsampling techniques to process large samples of aquatic invertebrates. However, limited information is available regarding subsampling techniques for terrestrial invertebrate samples. Therefore a novel subsampling procedure was evaluated for processing samples of terrestrial invertebrates collecte...

A landscape-scale study from 2004 to 2006 investigated the spatial and temporal dynamics of a new pest to the Columbia Basin of the Pacific Northwest, the potato tuberworm, Phthorimaea operculella (Zeller). Male P. operculella were monitored in spring, summer, and fall each year with a pheromone-baited trapping network in Oregon and Washington. The...

The amount of time needed to process samples with large numbers of terrestrial invertebrates in the laboratory has been a long-standing obstacle impeding progress in invertebrate conservation biology and applied ecology. Laboratory subsampling of samples with large numbers of invertebrates is one method that saves time and reduces processing cost....

One common problem encountered when restoring grasslands is the prominence of non-native plant species. It is unclear what effect non-native plants have on habitat quality of grassland passerines, which are among the most imperiled groups of birds. In 2004 and 2005, we compared patterns of avian reproduction and the mechanisms that might influence...

This study evaluated the influence of cattle stocking density on botanical composition of diet, diet preference, and cattle performance on a native bunchgrass prairie. In each of two years, 192 cow-calf pairs (549.27 kg, BCS = 4.89) and 48 yearling heifers (383.34 kg, BCS = 5.02) were stratified by age and body condition, and randomly allotted to a...

This study examined the effect of livestock grazing on a common herbivore in semiarid grasslands of the Southwest: the rainbow grasshopper, Dactylotum variegatum. Population attributes and key environmental variables were compared between sites on active cattle ranches and sites on a 3160-ha ungrazed sanctuary. Although density of D. variegatum nym...

Morphometric condition (i.e., condition estimated from some aspect of body size) is frequently calculated from mass-size residuals, and is often used to infer something about an animal's energetic state. However, controversy exists about the validity of using mass-size residuals for this purpose. Recent work suggests the approach is appropriate in...

The potato tuberworm, Phthorimaea operculella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), is an important pest of solanaceous crops including potato [Solanum tuberosum L. (Solanaceae)]. Recent evidence of survival of the pest in the Columbia Basin of Oregon and Washington, USA, is surprising as potato tuberworm is most commonly a pest in tropical and subtro...

The potato tuberworm, Phthorimaea operculella, is a pest of many solanaceous crops, including potatoes. Commonly found in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world, potato tuberworm (PTW) is one of the most important constraints to potato production worldwide. Larvae of this species mine leaves, stems, and petioles and excavate tunnels...

Despite the importance of invertebrates in grassland ecosystems, few studies have examined how grassland invertebrates have been impacted by disturbances in the southwestern United States. These grasslands may be particularly sensitive to one common disturbance, livestock grazing, because they have not recently evolved in the presence of large herd...

Woody riparian vegetation plays important roles in stream ecosystems and its presence can have strong impacts on stream fauna. Agricultural practices have led to the removal and fragmentation of woody riparian vegetation in many watersheds. It is unclear whether small, isolated patches of woody riparian vegetation continue to exert important influe...

Despite the importance of invertebrates in grassland ecosystems, few studies have examined how grassland invertebrates have been impacted by disturbances in the southwestern United States. These grasslands may be particularly sensitive to one common disturbance, livestock grazing, because they have not recently evolved in the presence of large herd...

We examined the impact of environmental conditions on the sex pheromone and mating behavior of the cockroach, Nauphoeta cinerea. Previous research on this species has shown that female behavior during courtship reflects female mate choice, male behavior correlates with male social status, and the male sex pheromone is the character used by females...

Sexual selection theory proposes that mate-locating tactics will be driven by the temporal and spatial patterns of receptive females. I tested this hypothesis in the libellulid dragonfly, Libellula saturata, by examining two predictions: 1) that male densities should be highest at times when the probability of encountering receptive females is the...