Hiking up to the next plot…
Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory have been collecting long-term malaise trap data dating back to 1984. This has captured trends in insect populations in Gothic, showing significant change in insects with climate change (Dalton et al. 2023). However, this study sampled from only one site, and so cannot capture how insect populations may differ with spatial variation. In this study, we sampled from three sites in the Gothic area spanning an elevational gradient of 2800 to 3350 meters. Insects were sampled at each site on 7-10 day intervals throughout the summers of 2025 and 2026. These samples were then identified to order and weighed to determine biomass. Insect order biomass and abundance, and climatic variables were used to construct GLMMs which used predictors found significant in the Dalton et al. 2023 paper. Site, or elevation, and taxon described little variation in insect abundance and biomass. Models showed biomass and abundance to increase as days since snowmelt increase. However, using AIC tests to compare models for current year's and previous year's precipitations' correlation with biomass and abundance, I found that biomass increases with previous year's precipitation whereas abundance increases with the current year's precipitation. When comparing biomass and sampling day from 2025 and 2026 with biomass predicted from the last 20 years' average of snowmelt time, the model suggested an earlier insect phenology relative to historic trends.
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