Data for "Nesting success of wood-cavity-nesting bees declines with increasing time since wildfire"

We investigated how wood-cavity-nesting bee species richness, nesting success, as well as nesting and floral resources varied across gradients of wildfire severity and time-since-burn (Simananok and Burkle 2019). We sampled nesting bees via nesting boxes within four wildfires in southwest Montana, USA using a space-for-time substitution chronosequence approach spanning 3 to 25 years post-burn and including an unburned control. In addition we collected information on local habitat characteristics including the number of wood cavities, volume of coarse woody debris, and percent canopy cover.
These data were part of a study designed to investigate how wood-cavity-bee nesting success might change after wildfire. Cavity-nesting bees require foraging and nesting resources to occur in close proximity; however, spatial and temporal patterns in the availability and quantity of these resources can be affected by disturbances like wildfire. The potential for spatial or temporal separation of foraging and nesting resources is of particular concern for solitary wood-cavity-nesting bees as they are central-place, short-distance foragers once they have established their nest. Often the importance of nesting resources for bees have been tested by sampling foraging bees as a proxy, and nesting bees have rarely been studied in a community context, particularly post-disturbance.
Data were originally published on 10/03/2019. Metadata were updated on 10/07/2019 to include reference to newly published journal article.