There is a growing body of work that investigates the response of bee communities to
anthropogenic disturbances, yet not much is known about how bees and other aculeate wasps respond to ‘natural’ disturbances created by wild vertebrates. Small-scale disturbance regimes maintained by the diverse behaviors found within vertebrate communities have the potential to generate a dynamic landscape of microhabitats relevant to nest-exploring wasps. In North American grassland systems, the presence of bison wallows has been shown to influence plant and animal communities through various mechanisms. But whether bison wallows are suitable nest sites for ground-nesting aculeate wasps is currently unknown. We quantified how bison wallow microhabitats differ from the surrounding grassland and found that bison wallow microhabitats have significantly higher surface temperatures and contain soils with a significantly higher bulk density. We also recorded the richness and identity of ground nesting aculeate wasps that utilize the bison wallows as nest sites. The richness of species nesting per wallow ranged from 10 to 60 species and overall, we recorded 137 species nesting across 10 wallow sites. Lastly, we investigated the nesting wasp community across wallows of different size, soil bulk density, and soil texture. We saw a strong effect of wallow size on the richness, with larger wallows containing more nesting species, but no effect of wallow size on community composition. We conclude that natural disturbance created by wild vertebrates plays a crucial role in generating nesting microhabitat patches for ground-nesting bee and aculeate wasp diversity in tallgrass prairies.
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