Nebraskaland

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2015 • NEBRASKAland 39 restoration in other locations. Highway projects were among the first to raise the question about how the work might affect the beetle, and neither road planners nor researchers were sure what the soil disturbance that came with such projects meant for the insect. Similar questions were raised by the initial and revised route of TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which would carry oil 1,179 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Steel City, Nebraska, where it would connect to the existing pipelines that would carry it on to refineries in the Midwest and on the Gulf Coast. TransCanada's first Keystone pipeline was completed in recent years, following a less direct route from Canada to Texas that also crossed eastern Nebraska. Currently, the possible effects of Nebraska Public Power District's R-Project, a planned 345,000-kilovolt transmission line that will stretch 225 miles from NPPD's Gerald Gentleman Station near Sutherland north to Thedford and east into Holt County, are being analyzed. Hoback has been a part of much of the research these projects have spawned. He began studying American burying beetles in 1998 while at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As an entomology professor at the University of Nebraska-Kearney from 1999 to 2014, he led numerous research projects and population surveys conducted by his students. For many summers, he has worked as an independent consultant for companies such as TransCanada. Now at Oklahoma State University, his research and field work on beetles continues in Nebraska and elsewhere. Studies conducted for the Nebraska Department of Roads identified several strategies that could lessen the effects of projects on the beetles. Those studies found that beetles prefer moist loam soil, even more so if it's covered with grass and leaves. As such, Hoback determined that mowing roadsides prior to projects and removing the cut vegetation decreases soil moisture and makes it less likely that beetles, which are highly susceptible to water loss and desiccation, could be breeding, wintering or simply spending the day underground in those areas. Removing roadkill that could attract beetles to a project area was also recommended. Hoback also used dead lab rats monitored with infrared video cameras to study the effectiveness of the "bait- away stations" that were being used to draw beetles away from construction areas and thought to be an effective avoidance measure. Video from one such station in 2009 pictured 15 American burying beetles 15 minutes after sunset. Three hours later, an opossum arrived and immediately ate a beetle. In the minutes that followed, and in a later visit the same night, the opossum ate six more. The study found that other predators including leopard frogs arrived and dined on beetles and other insects at the sites. "Bait-away stations not only attracted predators of the beetle, but they also didn't hold beetles there," Hoback said. "Beetles would feed and then go back to the work zone." That finding led to studies that measured the effectiveness of trapping beetles and relocating them to other areas. Five-gallon buckets were buried to ground level, baited with a rat and partially covered so insects but little else could get in. This trapping method is now the standard throughout the beetle's range thanks to research in Nebraska that found it to be more effective and reliable than methods using smaller containers and baits that were being used elsewhere. The traps have been shown to attract nearly all of the beetles within a half mile – a 500-acre area – during five nights of trapping. Traps were placed every mile through the study sites and beetles that were captured were marked with a spot of paint and moved 3 to 7 miles east of the project site, putting them on the downwind side of the prevailing winds. From 2007 to 2012, more than 2,500 beetles were moved a few miles from the construction sites, and none returned, Hoback said. This work raised questions about what happened to the beetles after they were moved, and led to another project that moved two related species of carrion beetles. "When we moved those beetles, we had equal recaptures, whether they had been moved or not, suggesting that the process of moving doesn't impact the beetles," Hoback said. "So this looks to be a safe and effective conservation measure in situations where a large area with a lot of beetles is going to be disturbed." More recent work in areas where beetles were removed has shown that the insect has returned. "As long as the habitat is still suitable, the beetles will come back," Hoback said. Hoback's research and that of his graduate students, including Jess Jurzenski, whose work was instrumental in the development of a model and range maps for the species, is now being used to determine if Wyatt Hoback places a spot of blue paint on the shield of an American burying beetle captured in a pitfall trap during population surveys in Holt County that will let him know if he recaptures the beetle on a later date.

• Cover