Metabarcoding of terrestrial arthropod assemblages of grasslands of the southern Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Between now and the year 2099, the climate-biome of the Kenai Peninsula has been predicted to change from coastal boreal forest to prairie and grasslands. This may be happening presently on the southern Kenai Peninsula, where spruce (Picea ×lutzii Little [glauca × sitchensis]) forests were heavily thinned by a massive outbreak of the spruce bark beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis (Kirby, 1837)) in the 1990s. Large areas were subsequently burned in the 2005 Fox Creek Fire and the 2007 Caribou Hills Fire. We sought to delimit and characterize potentially expanding grasslands in this region and document their arthropod and earthworm communities.