Fire and insects

[bb07]

Last year a fire burned a large area, predominately jack pine and black spruce.
I had no idea why, but a very short time afterwards, we were suddenly inundated with woodpeckers. They were everywhere. From morning to night, day after day, week after week, the sound of busy woodpeckers echoed all around.

Here they've been busy. This is when they were just getting started. Trees everywhere now have had large areas of their bark knocked off.

After some investigating, I learned something new.
When I peeled a bit of bark off one of the fire killed trees I noted with surprise that it was actually somewhat slimy, with the bark coming off easily. I thought it would have been quite the opposite.
A closer look reveals why: pupae and larvae everywhere

Here I peeled a piece of bark back, revealing one

A closeup behind the bark

Some research suggests these are responsible -Sawyer beetles

People here call them spruce beetles, but they are known by other names as well. I'm assuming that the heat of the fire must have caused the rapid development of these insects. If anyone is familiar with this type of insect, or has more information, I would be happy to hear from you.
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[Harvestman]

I would imagine that the fire had no effect on the development of the beetle larvae, but may have stimulated them to move to the surface either to escape the fire and try to get to another tree (seems unlikely) or possibly just triggering emergence as the surface layer of wood is weaker. Or they are just trying to relocate to a more solid, less burned bit of the same tree.

Whatever, for the same reason, the local woodpeckers will have learned that such trees are easy pickings, as it is easier to get at all the grubs.

Things like this show how important standing dead wood is for things like beetles with wood-eating larvae. The average upright dead tree will be absolutely riddled with larvae.

Nice post. Thank you.