With the removal and destruction of natural areas for human use, there is a push to restore natural habitats. However, most restoration activities focus on reestablishing plant communities, while less is known about the recovery of organisms in higher trophic levels and their functional roles. Considering functional traits (those that explain an organisms' response to environmental change and impacts on ecosystems) of restored communities may reveal how communities, and the ecosystem functions they drive, recover. Of particular interest are ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) because of their diversity and important ecological roles as consumers. This study focused on the ground beetle community's taxonomic and functional responses to time since restoration, presence of bison, and prescribed fire to make predictions of how ground beetles influence restoration outcomes in tallgrass prairie. Specifically, the functional responses of interest were seed and arthropod predation. FDiv and FDis, two measures of functional diversity, were negatively affected by prescribed fire and presence of bison, but older restored sites had higher FDiv and FDis values. Predation rates, related to ecosystem functioning, also declined with recent fire. Older sites also had a higher activity density (abundance) of ground beetles, and bison created particularly favorable habitat for carnivorous and flightless species. While there was no clear pattern of how site age or bison impacted the ground beetle community, prescribed fire tended to reduce functional diversity and predatory function. Therefore, land managers should consider the timeframe between prescribed burns in order to allow the ground beetle community to reestablish, if the goal is to increase ground beetle community diversity and functional diversity.

Insect movement across habitat edges between forest and agriculture has the potential to affect ecosystem processes. In this study, I quantified aerial beetle communities in Ohio along transect lines crossing forest edges and stretching into corn and forest habitats. The goal of this study was to determine the effect of forest patch size, distance to the forest edge and agricultural matrix effects on beetle community dynamics. Beetle abundance and species richness were significantly higher at the edge throughout season. Net difference in abundance showed that in large fragments, individuals moved toward forest interior whereas beetles in small fragments flux towards corn. This suggests that large forest fragment edge were "hard" compared to small forest fragments. Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling showed log patch area and tree importance value were the two most importance variables in determining species composition. Spillover of insects across boundaries has various implications for biodiversity research in land management.