Greenroofs, Solar Arrays, and Urban Farms: Insect Conservation in Human-Dominated Ecosystems

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Guest Information

Dr. Chelse Prather is an associate professor and environmental biology coordinator at the University of Dayton. As an ecologist, Chelse has worked with insect communities in forests, grasslands, and urban ecosystems. She has managed a variety of projects from understanding basic insect ecology, like what nutrients limit insect communities, to very applied projects, such as how the installation of solar arrays affects insect communities.

Show Notes & Links

There are many ways to create insect habitats in human-dominated ecosystems. In this episode, we discuss three: greenroofs, solar arrays, and urban farms. More research is being done to study their benefits to insects, but the early consensus is that providing native plants in all of these ecosystems is beneficial.

Episode image credit: Matthew Shepherd

Transcript

Matthew: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/donate.

Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: Most of the natural world has been altered by humans in some way. Ecosystems that are dominated by humans or man-made structures, such as cities, can still provide meaningful and essential habitat for insects. Today, we are going to discuss research being done in various human-dominated landscapes to answer the question: how do we restore and conserve insects in these ecosystems?

Rachel: Today we are joined by Dr. Chelse Prather, associate professor and environmental biology coordinator at the University of Dayton. As an ecologist, Chelse has worked with insect communities in forests, grasslands, and urban ecosystems. She has managed a variety of projects from undergoing basic insect ecology, like what nutrients limit insect communities, to very applied projects, such as how the installation of solar arrays affects insect communities.

Rachel: Welcome, Chelse! We’re so excited to have you here today and talk about so many different topics!

Chelse: Yeah! Thanks for having me! I'm really excited to be here.

Matthew: I mean, before we dive into learning more about your research, Rachel used the term human-dominated landscapes. How would you define that? And the reason why I'm asking, because I look around and I see so many places that are dominated by humans, but I'm guessing you focus your research into a narrower subset of places.

Chelse: My research has occurred in a narrower subset of places, but when I think of a human-dominated landscape, it's one those things where when you see it, you know that's what it is. I mean, just think like, if you're looking around and most of the stuff—whether it's living or not living—is either structure made by man, or you know biomass of humans, or has been put there by humans, I consider that to be a human-dominated landscape.

Matthew: So it's pretty much everything I see.

Chelse: Haha. It's a lot of our landscapes now, right?

Matthew: Yeah. I'm kind of playing devil's advocate. I mean, if it's like a heavily developed area, is it really worth creating habitat in those spaces? I mean, what kind of benefits can come from that work?

Chelse: So I started thinking differently about this after working—I was working with grasshopper and katydid communities in Texas in this really rare prairie type—the coastal tall grass prairie—there's only one tenth of 1% of it remaining, so almost all gone. There are little patches around. People are interested in restoring the habitat, especially because it soaks up flood water. So when you get a hurricane or something, like you really want prairie there. So I had been working in this nice strip of prairie that was left, and studying the grasshoppers and katydids for a while. But one of the people who was doing some of these restoration projects called me—Jaime Gonzalez, he is a conservationist that works in the Houston area—and he had been a part of putting a prairie in the middle of downtown Houston, like right in the middle, surrounded by skyscrapers. And he was like, “Would you care to come out and sample grasshoppers and katydids here?” And I was like, “I mean, I can, but like do you really think there will be anything?” And he was like, “Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of katydids calling, and you know, I think there is quite a bit of stuff.”

Chelse: It was at that point, I think a two-year-old prairie. So I go with some students, we have our sweep nets, we're collecting. And I sampled a higher diversity of grasshoppers and katydids there than on this much bigger remnant prairie—which to me was just astounding. You know, how is this happening? There were pygmy grasshoppers, which are semi-aquatic and need a water source to survive. For all I could tell, they were probably using the sewer system as that water source. I mean, I was just astounded at what I saw. So that really changed my perspective. And since then, you know, I've paid a lot of attention to places where people are intentionally planting native plants—and it could be just a couple of native plants, it could be a lot of native plants. One of the things people who are in the know really like to plant—as you guys know—are milkweeds. You can find just very isolated milkweeds that have some of the insect community associated with milkweeds, and it's in the middle of a downtown. I mean, the insects can find it. And I do think these very human-dominated landscapes are very worth restoring and thinking about insect conservation.

Matthew: I have to admit, I completely agree with you. That's why I said, “I'm playing devil's advocate here.” Haha.

Chelse: Yeah.

Matthew: But no, I mean, what you were saying about that scrap of created prairie and diversity really does underscore the ability of insects to find isolated patches, benefit from them, and just their adaptability. So I mean, partly thinking about that—do you think there are any landscapes where increasing habitat could be more significant or more impactful than others?

Chelse: I think that areas that just do not have much edible vegetation at all. So where most of the plants are, you know, tough to eat ornamental things that have—are ornamentals, because they are tough to eat. Putting stuff there that is more readily edible to herbivores and to the things that eat herbivores are especially beneficial.

Rachel: So today we're going to focus on three different projects that you're working on—which we just said before we started that we could probably do a whole podcast on each of them—which I'm excited to dive into each because some of these we really haven't touched on at all on the podcast. And I admittedly don't know a whole lot about them. And so we're going to start with green roofs. And if you can just start by explaining what is a green roof?

Chelse: Sure. So a green roof is just when you plant some kind of garden—people use lots of different kinds of vegetation—on the roof of a building. The buildings are usually taller in cities, and we can go into how they are constructed, and what types of plants that you put there but generally, a garden on top of a building is a green roof.

Rachel: All right. I always have this mental image of like a roof with grass on it. I don't know why that's what I conjure up. I feel like that's what they advertise when companies are like, “We’ll install a green roof.” Haha.

Chelse: Yeah.

Rachel: So you talked about a city—being on more taller, taller buildings—are there specific environments where green roofs don't really work? Specific areas of like, you know, I'm just thinking about weather, climate, that might work better than others?

Chelse: Yeah. So if you think of the top of the building, it's pretty dry up there, it's pretty windy, it's hotter than a lot of the surrounding area. It's not going to hold on to water well, so it works better in places where arid plants can grow better. Because that is the most common thing to plant—is more arid plants and things, plants that can grow in really shallow amounts of soil. Because you don't want to be putting tons and tons of soil on top of the building, because that could interfere with the structure of the building. So they can really work anywhere, it just depends on getting the right mixture of plants for that environment.

Rachel: And that leads to my next question of: what types of plants are better to grow on roofs. Do you have an example of one?

Chelse: Yeah, so a lot of the roofs that we've studied are based on a sedum community, which is a more arid type plant with shallow roots. And people will put other kind of more arid plants up there. But I have seen people do have people amazing things—grow fruits and vegetables on top of buildings. Grow lots of native plants on top of buildings. It also depends on how much work you're willing to put in, and if you are going to irrigate the plants or not. So there's a lot of stuff that could work, but the majority of what I've seen has been sedum based.

Rachel: Okay, one of the kind of basic questions I want to ask is like, how is it helpful to have a green roof? Much I think of the prairie example you gave—do a lot of pollinators use green roofs? Is it helpful with combating climate change?

Rachel: Yeah, yeah. So several different reasons, you know, with the very little vegetation you have in the middle of cities. One there is not that much habitat for things like insects, but two, not having a lot of trees and having a lot of concrete means that temperatures are higher. So any chance that you can get to bring vegetation back in to a city can help to cool things down. So people say this can combat the effects of climate change by cooling things down more in cities.

Rachel: Yeah, I've seen Angela Laws—who I know that you went to grad school with, and have worked with—she has shown us sort of these heat maps of cities. It is really incredible to see how much hotter these man-made structures make a specific area, and kind of create this like heated zone compared to outside of that.

Chelse: I live in Dayton, Ohio and on average in the summer, it's about 20 degrees hotter in the city than it is in the surrounding rural areas. So, I mean, it's a very significant difference, on especially really hot days.

Rachel: Wow, that's incredible. I would have thought maybe by like five, 10 degrees, but 20 is—.

Chelse: Yeah.

Rachel: That's a lot. That's kind of miserable. Haha.

Chelse: Yeah.

Rachel: So I think like a lot of other things, people say, “Oh, it's green. You know, it's good.” But we know that's not the case—like we think about lawns, for example, non-native lawn species, not really providing any habitat. Is that kind of the same with green roofs? Are some better than others, or some actually not very green?

Chelse: So I can tell you a little bit about what I have observed and what I've found. What we did—. I had a student who came to me and was really interested in green roofs. She was a student at the University of Dayton, Grace Jackson. And we thought through an observational experiment where we would collect data on insects. And we decided on ants as a model organism, because ants can do pretty well in the tops of trees where it is also hot and windy and dry. So we thought that, you know, the communities of ants on the tops of these roofs might also be the types of ants that you would see in the types of in the tops of trees. So we looked at three green roofs in each of three cities: Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati. The green roofs varied a lot. Some were on super short buildings, some were on really tall buildings. Some, as I was mentioning, were growing produce. Some had native plants, some just had sedum and that was it.

Chelse: But what we found with the ants was that—we were looking at the ground communities, too, and comparing the ants on the green roof to the ants on the ground—what it looks like the data is telling us is the community is pretty much the same. The soils on the roofs are really shallow, so they're not really good for creating ant nests. We very rarely saw ant nests—I think only on one of our roofs. And it was the same community, because what we think is going on is the ants from the ground are coming up on the roofs and foraging, because oftentimes there's more there to eat. I mean, we saw them like tending hemipterans, and things like that up there. And there was no availability to do that on the ground. So just like they might go and forage in the tops of trees, not necessarily nest up there, but go up there to eat, we think these ants on green roofs are doing a similar thing.

Chelse: So I guess whether or not certain ones are more green or not, there were definitely some, like not just the ants, but you could look around and you could see pollinators. We saw butterflies, we saw bees. I saw even like very early instar grasshoppers, which means that they were born up there, so they're actually reproducing up there. So some of them are really good because there's lots of different plants up there. Some of them you wouldn't see nearly as much, those that were just dominated by very arid plants that the native insects weren't used to feeding on.

Matthew: I've now got this little image of a little ant highway going up the corner of a building to get to the roof.

Chelse: Yeah, yeah.

Matthew: But then you also mentioned grasshoppers, and I know some can fly a little bit. But how, do you have a sense, do you have an idea of how they may have got up to the top of these buildings?

Chelse: That’s how I felt about a lot of the stuff that I was seeing up there, you know, I'm literally thinking, “How did you get up there?” Because grasshoppers, on some of these tall buildings, like you're right, they can fly, but they're not super strong flyers. They can kind of jump up a little bit and glide. So as far as I can tell maybe like winds carried them up there, and then they just got up there. Several of them were up there and reproducing. Yeah, your guess is as good as mine.

Matthew: Because I have read a few papers about surveys of eco roofs like in London and other cities in Europe where they've been finding ground beetles 25, 30 stories up, and well-established spider communities. And some of those, I know the spiders probably may have ballooned up on, as little ones. But some of these other insects just don't seem like they would be able to get so high.

Chelse: I agree. It was very surprising being up there.

Matthew: Yeah. And so, I know something else from the trend—and I think the trend is happening, because here in Portland, there's a really solid eco roof, green roof community, as well. And that's partly because we have a lot of rain, so it's another way of managing storm water. But some of the things that have been happening in Europe, where they haven't been building green roofs so much as brown roofs, where it's as much about creating bare soil and those habitats that are really unusual in urban areas for very particular species.

Chelse: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Matthew: That’s why before we started, I said, “Oh, eco roofs! I wish we could talk more about eco roofs.” Because I think they, they are something that could really bring some great habitat into our cities whilst also beginning to address some of these other bigger climate and weather-related issues, too, so.

Chelse: Yeah, I agree. I think it's a win-win for a lot of reasons. Although, you know, talking to the people who are managing these roofs, when we said we were going up and studying insects there, they would be really surprised. Because [to] them, thinking about insects on the green roofs—especially ants—it was like how to get rid of them. Because they were coming from the roof and going into offices, and the building and stuff. And people didn't like that, so.

Rachel: Yeah, that was what I was going to ask next is the sort of practicality of green roofs? You know, what are the constraints on installing, maintaining? I did think about the ants sort of invading people's spaces. And Matthew, I had the same image of ants scaling a building, because we often think of ants just being on the ground, and it's just so incredible they're using them almost like trees. But yeah, what are the constraints of installation and maintenance? What are those challenges?

Chelse: Yeah, so some of them require a lot of work, and some of them do not. And it really depends on the plant community you are trying to establish and maintain, as you can imagine. So as I mentioned, one of the big constraints is the amount of soil you can put down. So different companies will put in different types of things, but generally they put in a very thin layer of gravel with maybe a couple inches of soil on top of that. So you're really constrained plant-wise by what you can put in by the amounts of soil. Although, where people are trying to grow like produce, I will see them bring in more like raised beds. But again, you have to be very careful about the integrity of the building, and that you're not putting too much weight on there. So that is something that you have to consider.

Chelse: You also have to consider how the plants are going to get water, and how much they are going to need to be watered—is the is it a person that's going to have to water them, or are you going to get an irrigation system? And how that irrigation system—having water on top of a roof—again will affect the integrity of the building. So there's a lot to consider when you're thinking about what plants you want to bring in, how much soil to put down, how you want to manage and water those plants. There definitely are constraints. Although, I've seen roofs that run the gamut on what they do.

Matthew: Yeah, as you say, there’s such diversity and variety of what's possible. And for sure, it's probably easier to design a green roof into a new building than it is to retrofit.

Chelse: Yeah, exactly.

Matthew: So, you mentioned rooftop farms, and that's kind of the segue into the next topic, you know, bringing us back down to ground level—green spaces between buildings, parks, creeks, and in particular, urban farms. And urban farm—I mean, you think of a farm and you somehow picture, you know, corn, soy fields to the horizon kind of thing, but you can't be achieving that in an urban area. So urban farms must be quite different from rural farms. But I don't know. What—. Are there any kind of consistent features that an urban farm might have that helps it kind of be an urban farm rather than a farm farm?

Chelse: Yeah, so for this particular project, we were using a very limited definition of what an urban farm is based on how many people there were in the area—so population density of the area—and density of like structures in the area—how built up the area was. So it really had to be like in a city for it to be considered an urban farm. So we had a network of what's known as peri-urban—so, you know, the area just outside of urban areas, suburban areas—we had a network of peri-urban and of urban farms that we were looking at.

Matthew: Yeah, so it's more the surrounding landscape rather than something that's actually inside the farm.

Chelse: Yes, exactly.

Matthew: Yeah. And would you include community gardens in the same category as urban farms?

Chelse: Yeah, that was something that we kind of struggled a lot about. I think it really—if you're talking about research-wise, it really depends on the types of questions that you were interested in. We were really interested in how farm management affected insects. If you try to do that on a community garden, where different plots are being managed differently by many, many different people, it gets complicated really quickly. So we were just using farms that had one owner and we're managed by just one person.

Matthew: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense from a practicality perspective. So, I mean, what were you studying on these farms?

Chelse: So in this one, this was led by a master's student in my lab, Sam Urquidez, and she was interested [in] if the things that urban farmers were doing to attract pollinators to their farms were actually working or not. So there's a lot of pollinator recruitment methods that people try to do, especially in these urban farms where you think, “Oh, there might not be a lot of bees around to pollinate my crops.” So she was looking at these pollinator recruitment methods—and they include things like putting up you know bee hotels for nesting cavities, for cavity nesting bees, putting out water sources, planting both native and non-native flowers for floral resources, actually having a Apis mellifera, honey bee hive on your property to increase pollination, lots of different things. She was looking at all these things, and seeing if those things were actually working or not. So she had a sociological part of her study where she was actually surveying and interviewing the farmers. And then she had the biological part where she was looking at the pollinators. And to do that she was recording number of visits to flowers, and also using pan traps to look at the pollinator community.

Chelse: And she found some really interesting stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of the pollinator methods you did not see a significant increase in pollinators, but the big one you did was planting especially native flowers—which might not come as that big of a surprise. But the other cool thing that she found was even though singly the pollinator recruitment methods weren't necessarily working, the more pollinator recruitment methods you use, the more bee visits you would get to flowers, which is good. And then another super interesting thing that she found that I just find fascinating—the number of honey bee visits of flowers did not increase with having a hive on your property. So no difference if you had a hive or you did not with number of honey bee visits. The good news is they did not impact the native bees negatively either.

Matthew: That is interesting, particularly them us—you saying there didn’t seem to be more competition between honey bees and native bees.

Chelse: Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah, and you said that presence of native plants did benefit native bees and that the more, the more treatment, the more things you did, you got more bees. Presuming that, if I'm understanding correctly, it's like, if you plant an insectary strip full of native plants, that's good. But if you planted two of those, or three of those, then that means that you get more bees, rather than like, oh, an insectary strip and then some other kind of action.

Chelse: No, we didn't look at like the amount of native flowers. We were looking at the total amount of different pollinator recruitment methods you were using. So if you planted native plants, and had a bee hotel, and had a water source for bees, and did this—especially if you had four or more—then bee visits really increased.

Matthew: Okay, I’m glad I asked for clarification just so. Because it comes down to the idea, it seems that if you've got flowers, and nest sites, and other things that bees need to support their life cycle, then you get more bees.

Chelse: Yeah, exactly.

Matthew: Yeah. That's a nice, easy take home, isn't it?

Chelse: Yes. Haha.

Matthew: With urban farms—it seems like urban farms can bring some great benefit, both from the perspective of supporting local community, and providing food—supporting the farmer, as well, and the pollinators. Are you aware of any particular barriers to people having urban farms? I mean, I imagine land must be one of them—availability. Are there any other things that make it hard?

Chelse: I mean, another thing that you really have to think about is soil contamination, and what the previous land use was. Because if it is vacant because a building used to be there, maybe the building was painted with lead paint, and you have very high levels of lead in the soil. We have still seen urban farms in those very contaminated areas, and they have to do everything with raised beds instead of putting things in the ground. So that is a really big concern, not just with lead, but with other heavy metal contaminants, like copper. And we do have some preliminary data that suggests like the more copper contamination you have in the soil, the fewer bees that you have. And in the Midwest and in a lot of cities, copper is a really common pollutant that comes from industrial areas that can be near cities and affect things like insects.

Matthew: When you mentioned soil contamination, I was going to follow up with asking whether that impacted bees, and then you mentioned the copper. From—I don't know whether this was something that you were able to glean from the data—but looking at the diversity of species, were you seeing that there were like more above ground nests, you know, like tunnel, snag nesting bees, or ground nesting bees, and was there anything that indicated that soil contamination might change whether bees were nesting in the ground?

Chelse: Yeah, so we did look at the number of ground nesting bees and the two things that stood out to us were lead and copper in soil both affected the number of bees. But we looked at just the number of ground nesting bees, and that didn't seem to be different with those different levels, which kind of surprised me. So it was the entire bee community that abundance went down, and the number of bee species you had went down with more lead and more copper contamination in the soil.

Matthew: Wow. Yeah, and at this point, we may not know why? Haha.

Chelse: No, we don't know why. I immediately, when I saw that result—it was an undergrad in my lab, Penelope Fisher, that was working at that data, on that data, and when they showed me the graph, I started searching, you know, “copper and bees” and there is just not much out there at all.

Matthew: Yeah. In a way I'm not too surprised knowing how much of the emphasis of research has revolved around honey bees and so on, and how solitary bees are sorely understudied.

Chelse: Yes, definitely.

Rachel: I love the—even though you didn't look at community gardens, I think what you learned on urban farms can definitely be translated to community gardens.

Rachel: So the last project we're going to highlight is focused on solar arrays, which for folks who are new to solar, it's a collection of solar panels. So that seems like a great place to create habitat. Can you tell us a little bit about the studies, and the work that you have done in areas of solar arrays?

Chelse: Yeah, so I got really interested in this because they were putting a solar array in on my campus, and we had a great person working in facilities that had a degree related to botany, and that person, Leah Ceperley, had been a champion at our university for native plants. And she said, “Hey, other solar arrays are being managed to also have native habitat underneath. Why don't we put a prairie underneath?” And so Leah spearheaded that effort to put a prairie underneath. One of the undergrads had heard about this—I didn't even know it was going on—Mary Grace Moses came to me and said, “Hey, they're going to put a prairie underneath the solar array. What if we look at the insect there?” I'm like, “I've never even thought about that. Like that sounds like it could be really interesting.”

Chelse: So I went over to the solar array once it had been built but before there were native plants underneath, and before the array was turned on—and it's a tilting array, so you know it tilts throughout the day to get the most exposure to the sun as possible—but this was before it was turned on, so it was completely horizontal. I go over there and just everywhere there are dragonflies laying their eggs on the panels. And so it turns out the panels give off a polarized light that makes them look very similar to water, and this can confuse aquatic insects. So I got really interested in it at that point, like, “Hey, what is going on?” And the good news is there have been a few papers published on this—not a lot—but once the panels were turned on and they were tilted most of the time, we didn't see any of that egg laying behavior at all. So we think that tilt of the panels can make a big difference for the insect.

Chelse: But we started just like looking at what organisms were using the area, and it turned out there were a lot of native bees, there were monarch butterflies, lots of different native species, and we were really excited about that. At the same time that we were studying like our isolated solar array, across the globe, but also in Ohio where we were, there was just a boom in solar. And so I had a PhD student start around that time, Stephanie Murray. And Stephanie really wanted to take on that project as her dissertation. And so she has developed a network of sites here in Ohio, some of which have solar already, but they have different kinds of vegetation. So, you know, people might intentionally seed something underneath—it might be native plants, it might be something else—or they might just let whatever grows grow, and keep it mowed all the time. But she was looking at those, if the native plants made a difference. We’re still at the preliminary stages, and still sorting insects, but just observationally, it does seem like the native plants make a big difference to, especially the pollinators.

Chelse: And then she also had sites where solar was going to be developed. So we sampled the insect community before solar went in, and then tracked it as it was being constructed, and over time. Right now, we just have one site where we have a couple of years’ worth of data before and after now. And at that particular site, they chose to just put native grasses in. So bees actually went down, because before it had been a field of goldenrod and they transformed it to grasses, so that's expected. But other insects went up. So, especially in the litter and soil collembolans really went up after the solar went in. I'm not sure if it's some kind of disturbance-driven result, and if that will go way over time, but that was really, really interesting.

Chelse: And then we also have done a little bit of work in California with a collaborator. And there, these systems are very, very different, they're more arid grasslands. Around here, you know, we're in a temperate climate, so much warm water. Around here in Ohio, underneath of the solar panels, it's shaded, there's not that much water, it's getting intercepted by the panel. So there's much less plant biomass underneath of the panels. And that's actually what you want, right? You don't want huge plants coming up and interfering with the functioning of the panels.

Chelse: But in California, you see something totally different where there the plants are limited by water and not necessarily sunlight, and the panel shading things keeps it cooler and keeps more humidity in. So you see more plant material underneath of the solar panels, and that seems to affect the insect community, too. So again, very preliminary data. We're in the stage of just doing data analysis, but there is a very different insect community inside and outside of the solar there.

Chelse: It looks like the phenology of insects might differ, as well. So underneath the panels—. When we were there, we just had sampled one time—it's at Topaz Solar Farm, one of the largest solar farms in the world—when we were there, underneath the panels was bright green, but not underneath the panels, in the aisles and in the outside around the panels, had already senesced—it was brown for the year. So the insects are seemingly syncing up with that plant community on a very micro scale. And we see differences in, for instance, insect sizes in these different micro habitats—inside solar, and then right outside of solar—which I find just astounding that it could be happening on that micro scale.

Rachel: Yeah, that's so interesting. And just the comparison between climates from being in Ohio versus California. I think it's great that insects just use—they will make use of space if it's there. Haha. And habitat.

Chelse: Oh, yeah. There are some insects that will use the solar panels themselves to nest on. So like paper wasps, we will see will build their nests on a panel that is moving throughout the day. So just think of trying to navigate around and trying to find your nest in rows, and rows, and rows of panels where your nest is physically moving throughout the day. It's just mind-blowing to me that they can do that.

Matthew: Yeah, as soon as you started, I was like, “Well, most of these seem to use visual navigation.” They have landmarks that help them find their nest and it’s—wow. Yeah, that is incredible.

Chelse: Yes.

Matthew: As Rachel noted, it was fascinating to hear the difference—the regional differences—between the temperate and the more arid. You know, I've encountered solar panels on roofs where the panels have very definitely changed the micro conditions across the roof, from areas where downslope the water drains and everything's moist-er, to underneath, as you say, it gets sheltered from the rain. And the differences in sun exposure, too. This this may be too, I mean obviously your research is still data gathering, analysis, and so on, but are you beginning to be able to pick out any kind of regional information that may help guide creation of habitat? I mean, how you might optimize habitat in these locations?

Chelse: We're more picking that up through talking with the land managers and people who are trying to put in the installations. Because we've seen a lot of things that have worked and a lot of things that have not worked. So this idea of creating native habitat underneath panels is called ecovoltaics. It's a really new phrase but people are very excited about it. People are super excited, but it's kind of the Wild West. Nobody knows what plants work and how to manage those plants. Because you have to think about really complicated things. Like you can't just put a prairie underneath that, because prairies need sunlight, right? So people have actually been putting a different seed mix right underneath the panels, in the aisle, and then along the outside.

Chelse: But there's also the issue of invasive species or woody plants coming in. And you cannot burn underneath the solar panels, right? So you have to manage, if you have woody plants, by mowing. But also think about this—other things besides insects are using solar panels, too. So birds are coming, perching on the panels, and then delivering propagules of woody plants and invasive plants, which adds another layer of like, how do you manage these systems in a way that makes sense? So I feel like we are learning a lot of what works and what doesn't. And we will try and put people in contact with each other, like, “Oh, we want to do this.” Like, “Well, have you talked to this person who tried something similar and it didn't work.” So right now, we're still kind of at the testing phase to see what works.

Matthew: Yeah, no, no. Because I've seen an increase in adverts and companies promoting the wonderful habitat there, they’re creating. So it's interesting to hear that it's still so much in the learning phase.

Chelse: Yes, it very much is.

Matthew: Yeah, but it’s also good that people are doing, like yourself, you're doing the research and others I guess, as well, are seeing what works and what doesn't, and learning from it so that we can optimize conditions.

Chelse: Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah.

Rachel: So with all of these projects, for listeners, how can they support building habitat in these areas?

Chelse: For the solar, in particular. For those projects to continue, especially projects that might be on public land, they have to go through a public approval process, often in some way where you have to have community meetings, where community members voice their concerns. You might not be concerned about the fact that there's solar going up, you might be really happy about that, but what you could do is go to the meeting and say, “Hey, it would be great if we could get native habitats underneath there. People are doing it. Let's reach out to other people that have done it, see what worked and what doesn't.” There's a lot of states that now have recommendations for what seed mixes to use underneath. I know that Ohio does, I'm sure other states do as well. So come with that information ready to those public meetings. That would be one thing for the solar that I would say.

Chelse: This is something that I'm sure you get all the time on your show—pretty much every project that I talked about, it came back to planting native plants. Planting native plants is good. So that is definitely a lesson learned, and it's something that is easy to implement even on your own land. And if you do that, it's amazing what you will see—if you build it, and they come—who shows up, which I think is pretty exciting.

Matthew: Yeah, no, that's definitely—. Encouraging people to plant native plants. If there's one thing you can do, grow native plants. The benefits will be so much wider than you can imagine.

Chelse: Yes.

Matthew: Chelse, thank you so much for sitting down with us today. This really, this has been a fascinating conversation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. We're coming to the end and we’re wrapping up, and so we always finish our conversations with the same basic questions for our guests, and the first of those is: what inspired you, you know, to bring you into this line of work, and you know, to be an ecologist, to research?

Chelse: So I was kind of always a little girl outside playing in the mud, but I was terrified of insects. I mean, I was the person, if I saw an insect land near me, I would run off, screaming. So one day my dad was like, “You are going to get over this. Like, it's happening today. You're going to touch a bug.” And I was like, “No, I don't want to. I don't want to.” But we were out sitting on our deck and there was just one of those, you know, iridescent green June beetles and he’s like, “Go over and touch it.” So I—it took me like 20 minutes. I got the courage, finally walked over, and was like millimeters away from it, and at that exact moment, a large predaceous beetle landed on top of it, and I ended up touching this huge beetle. And then like I like go, “Oh my God,” and it flew off with the June beetle. And it really freaked me out at the time, but it was something that always stuck with me, like something really cool was going on there, I got to witness something really cool.

Chelse: So when I went into college, I knew I wanted to do biology, but I really thought that like if you were a biologist, you go to medical school. I went to the University of Kentucky and we had this great class called Biology 101, where every week different practicing biologists would come in and talk to us. So there were like doctors, and nurses, lots of people in the medical field. And this one day, this guy comes in—Dr. James Krupa was his name. He had a t-shirt on that had different pictures of animal poop on it. And he started his talk by saying, “I get paid to tromp around the forest and answer interesting questions.” And I was like, “I did not know that was a job, but that is exactly what I want to do.” And so I went up to him afterwards and I was like, “I want to be an ecologist. What do I do?” And I kind of never looked back from that point.

Rachel: Oh, that's awesome. This is the first time it was like a t-shirt that had an influence. Haha.

Chelse: Haha. Yeah.

Rachel: But no, I love that. Well, our last question: if you could see any bug in the wild—and bug is a very loose term for any invertebrate, in the wild is anything outside of captivity—what would it be?

Chelse: Can I do two, because it's so hard to pick?

Rachel: Yes, you can definitely do two.

Chelse: So definitely—my PhD work was on walking sticks, and walking sticks have a special place in my heart, so seeing the Lord Howe Island walking stick is definitely like a bucket list thing. But the other thing that I have always dreamed of seeing is a midge emergence at Lake Mývatn, I think is how you say it, in Iceland. So there are these emergencies of midges where it's so thick, you know, you have to have a mask on, you can't breathe in, because there's so many midges flying up your nose. And I would love to see something like that.

Matthew: I can tell you, you’re the second person to mention the Lord Howe Island stick insect.

Chelse: Nice.

Matthew: Which is understandable because—what an amazing thing, but you have been the first person to mention wanting to be in the middle of a midge cloud, which I also think is just so wonderful.

Chelse: Haha.

Matthew: Those are the things that so many of us would run away from, and yet, as an insect, invertebrate, a bug enthusiast, these are also the things that we just find so fascinating and cool that we want to be out there.

Rachel: Well, thank you so much, Chelse. This has been really wonderful, I've learned so much.

Chelse: Of course, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me.

Matthew: Yeah, no, thank you.

Rachel: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-based nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates—the life that sustains us.

Rachel: If you’re already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast and for show notes go to xerces.org/bugbanter.