The Tree Team project is designed to find if relationships exist between arthropods and high elevation clonal American Beech trees, Fagus grandifolia. A series of active and passive collection techniques are being used to capture arthropods within the declining American Beech stands and the healthier control sites. These sites will be compared to gather information useful for the Park's management of these unique, yet problematic areas of forest community. If all continues to go well, the project could expand to other trees that are of conservation concern within the park.
The reports below represent species identified up to today's date. DLIA and volunteers first sort out the Arthropods into major groups (mostly orders), and then send them off to taxonomic experts to have them identified. Then these identified specimens are returned and the DLIA Data Tech enters their data into the park's database structure. This process is piecemeal in that we receive the groups of identified specimens a little at a time, depending on the taxonomists' schedules.
So far the following list represents the groups that have been identified thus far and are displayed in the reports below.
- Trees: American Beech trees and other trees that are being used as control species.
- Opiliones (daddy longlegs or harvestmen)
Taxonomist: Dr. Jeff Shultz, University of Maryland
Note: the reports below are accumulative and will include additional species as they are identified and entered into the ATBI database. So, check back with us as we continue to update our reports.
Collectors List: CollectorList.pdf
Collectors Species: CollectorSpecies.pdf
Count Per Specimen: SpecimenCount.pdf
Data Quality Notes: DataQualityNotes.pdf
Family Count Graph: FamilyCountAcGraph.pdf
Project Information: ProjectInfo.pdf
Sampling Method Results: SamplingMethodResults.pdf
Samplings List: SamplingsList.pdf
Sampling Site Locations: SiteList.pdf
Species by Substrate: TaxaBySubstrate.pdf
Species by Watershed: TaxaByWatershed.pdf
Species Composition: SpeciesComp.pdf
Species Ranking: SpeciesDistributionRanking.pdf
Species Report: Taxonomy.pdf
Species Richness: SpeciesRichness.pdf
Specimens List: Specimen.pdf
Upper Taxa List: UpperTaxa.pdf
Principal Investigator
PI Name: Todd Witcher
PI Organization: Discover Life in America, Exec DirCo-investigator #1
Co-PI Name: Daniel Roberts
Co-PI Organization: DLIA Intern and University of Alabama GraduateCo-investigator #2
Co-PI Name: Dr. Duane Pierce
Co-PI Organization: Retired - Volunteer AdvisorPrimary Taxonomist
Taxonomist Name: (various)
