The Korea Forest Service has designated seven alpine tree species—Abies koreana, A. nephrolepis, Juniperus chinensis, Picea jezoensis, Pinus pumila, Taxus cuspidata, and Thuja koraiensis—as threatened with extinction in Korea. In 2023, we conducted a study on the seasonal occurrence of insect pests, focusing mainly on two coleopteran taxa (Cerambycidae and Scolytinae) and two hemipteran taxa (Aphrophoridae and Cicadellidae) in subalpine forests dominated by A. koreana, A. nephrolepis, Picea jezoensis, Thuja koraiensis, and Taxus cuspidata. We utilized three types of traps—Malaise trap, Lindgren funnel trap, and window trap—in eight investigation locations in Korea. In this presentation, we present the study results and discuss the effects of insect pests on alpine coniferous trees in Korea.

본 연구는 생물 다양성의 지표종인 개미류의 시기별 우점종 및 개체군 변동을 살펴보고, 추후 기후변화에 따른 개체군 변화의 기초자료를 확보하고자 수행되었다. 조사 기간은 2013년 6월부터 9월까지 고도별 조사 지점을 선정하고, 함정트랩을 사용하여 정방형조사법(10m×10m)으로 개미의 분포를 조사하였다. 고도별 조사 결과, 총 3아과 11속 14종 15,466개체가 채집되었다. 낮은 고도(700m)에서 13종 4,548개체의 분포가 확인되었으며, 우점종은 일본장다리개미(49.9%)로 나타났고, 중간 고도(900m)에서 8종 9,129개체가 채집되었으며, 우점종으로 극동혹개미(57.7%)의 분포가 확인되었으며, 높은 고도 (1,100m)에서 10종 1,789개체가 확인되었으며, 우점종으로 코토쿠뿔개미(43.3%)가 확인되었다. 고도별로 일본장다리개미, 스미스개미, 극동혹개미는 폭넓게 분포하는 것으로 확인되었다.

We investigated the insect community along altitudinal gradient to gather basic data for distributional monitoring of insect species in the forest ecosystem. The investigation area was Seon-gaksan (Mt.) in Jinan-gun, Jeollabuk-do province, where the bucket-light trap and pit-fall trap for quantification were installed in Quercus vegetation at altitude of 300m, 600m and 900m. The field collecting was performed on May, July and September 2013 respectively. ANOVA analysis was conducted to analyze the significance between insect species along altitude using the collected insect community data. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results showed statistically significant differences among ground-beetles and ants abundance with altitude as a response variable. Although we expected a distinct cluster with the difference of altitude at each study site, nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS) showed distinct clusters with the moth, ground-beetles, and ant assemblage at altitudinal increase and sampling month. In the result, a total of 309 species in 18 families of nocturnal moths were collected by bucket-light trap. The insects collected in pit-fall trap were ground-beetles with 196 individuals of 26 species and ants with 11,276 individuals of 14 species respectively.