@article{UhlerRedlichZhangetal.2021, author = {Uhler, Johannes and Redlich, Sarah and Zhang, Jie and Hothorn, Torsten and Tobisch, Cynthia and Ewald, J{\"o}rg and Thorn, Simon and Seibold, Sebastian and Mitesser, Oliver and Morin{\`e}re, J{\´e}r{\^o}me and Bozicevic, Vedran and Benjamin, Caryl S. and Englmeier, Jana and Fricke, Ute and Ganuza, Cristina and Haensel, Maria and Riebl, Rebekka and Rojas-Botero, Sandra and Rummler, Thomas and Uphus, Lars and Schmidt, Stefan and Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg}, title = {Relationships of insect biomass and richness with land use along a climate gradient}, series = {Nature Communications}, volume = {12}, journal = {Nature Communications}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-021-26181-3}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-265058}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Recently reported insect declines have raised both political and social concern. Although the declines have been attributed to land use and climate change, supporting evidence suffers from low taxonomic resolution, short time series, a focus on local scales, and the collinearity of the identified drivers. In this study, we conducted a systematic assessment of insect populations in southern Germany, which showed that differences in insect biomass and richness are highly context dependent. We found the largest difference in biomass between semi-natural and urban environments (-42\%), whereas differences in total richness (-29\%) and the richness of threatened species (-56\%) were largest from semi-natural to agricultural environments. These results point to urbanization and agriculture as major drivers of decline. We also found that richness and biomass increase monotonously with increasing temperature, independent of habitat. The contrasting patterns of insect biomass and richness question the use of these indicators as mutual surrogates. Our study provides support for the implementation of more comprehensive measures aimed at habitat restoration in order to halt insect declines.}, language = {en} } @article{HaggeMuellerBirkemoeetal.2021, author = {Hagge, Jonas and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Birkemoe, Tone and Buse, J{\"o}rn and Christensen, Rune Haubo Bojesen and Gossner, Martin M. and Gruppe, Axel and Heibl, Christoph and Jarzabek-M{\"u}ller, Andrea and Seibold, Sebastian and Siitonen, Juha and Soutinho, Jo{\~a}o Gon{\c{c}}alo and Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne and Thorn, Simon and Drag, Lukas}, title = {What does a threatened saproxylic beetle look like? Modelling extinction risk using a new morphological trait database}, series = {Journal of Animal Ecology}, volume = {90}, journal = {Journal of Animal Ecology}, number = {8}, doi = {10.1111/1365-2656.13512}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-244717}, pages = {1934 -- 1947}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The extinction of species is a non-random process, and understanding why some species are more likely to go extinct than others is critical for conservation efforts. Functional trait-based approaches offer a promising tool to achieve this goal. In forests, deadwood-dependent (saproxylic) beetles comprise a major part of threatened species, but analyses of their extinction risk have been hindered by the availability of suitable morphological traits. To better understand the mechanisms underlying extinction in insects, we investigated the relationships between morphological features and the extinction risk of saproxylic beetles. Specifically, we hypothesised that species darker in colour, with a larger and rounder body, a lower mobility, lower sensory perception and more robust mandibles are at higher risk. We first developed a protocol for morphological trait measurements and present a database of 37 traits for 1,157 European saproxylic beetle species. Based on 13 selected, independent traits characterising aspects of colour, body shape, locomotion, sensory perception and foraging, we used a proportional-odds multiple linear mixed-effects model to model the German Red List categories of 744 species as an ordinal index of extinction risk. Six out of 13 traits correlated significantly with extinction risk. Larger species as well as species with a broad and round body had a higher extinction risk than small, slim and flattened species. Species with short wings had a higher extinction risk than those with long wings. On the contrary, extinction risk increased with decreasing wing load and with higher mandibular aspect ratio (shorter and more robust mandibles). Our study provides new insights into how morphological traits, beyond the widely used body size, determine the extinction risk of saproxylic beetles. Moreover, our approach shows that the morphological characteristics of beetles can be comprehensively represented by a selection of 13 traits. We recommend them as a starting point for functional analyses in the rapidly growing field of ecological and conservation studies of deadwood.}, language = {en} } @article{ThornChaoGeorgievetal.2020, author = {Thorn, Simon and Chao, Anne and Georgiev, Konstadin B. and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and B{\"a}ssler, Claus and Campbell, John L. and Jorge, Castro and Chen, Yan-Han and Choi, Chang-Yong and Cobb, Tyler P. and Donato, Daniel C. and Durska, Ewa and Macdonald, Ellen and Feldhaar, Heike and Fontaine, Jospeh B. and Fornwalt, Paula J. and Hern{\´a}ndez Hern{\´a}ndez, Raquel Mar{\´i}a and Hutto, Richard L. and Koivula, Matti and Lee, Eun-Jae and Lindenmayer, David and Mikusinski, Grzegorz and Obrist, Martin K. and Perl{\´i}k, Michal and Rost, Josep and Waldron, Kaysandra and Wermelinger, Beat and Weiß, Ingmar and Zmihorski, Michal and Leverkus, Alexandro B.}, title = {Estimating retention benchmarks for salvage logging to protect biodiversity}, series = {Nature Communications}, volume = {11}, journal = {Nature Communications}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-020-18612-4}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-230512}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Forests are increasingly affected by natural disturbances. Subsequent salvage logging, a widespread management practice conducted predominantly to recover economic capital, produces further disturbance and impacts biodiversity worldwide. Hence, naturally disturbed forests are among the most threatened habitats in the world, with consequences for their associated biodiversity. However, there are no evidence-based benchmarks for the proportion of area of naturally disturbed forests to be excluded from salvage logging to conserve biodiversity. We apply a mixed rarefaction/extrapolation approach to a global multi-taxa dataset from disturbed forests, including birds, plants, insects and fungi, to close this gap. We find that 757\% (mean +/- SD) of a naturally disturbed area of a forest needs to be left unlogged to maintain 90\% richness of its unique species, whereas retaining 50\% of a naturally disturbed forest unlogged maintains 73 +/- 12\% of its unique species richness. These values do not change with the time elapsed since disturbance but vary considerably among taxonomic groups. Salvage logging has become a common practice to gain economic returns from naturally disturbed forests, but it could have considerable negative effects on biodiversity. Here the authors use a recently developed statistical method to estimate that ca. 75\% of the naturally disturbed forest should be left unlogged to maintain 90\% of the species unique to the area.}, language = {en} } @article{KortmannRothBuseetal.2022, author = {Kortmann, Mareike and Roth, Nicolas and Buse, J{\"o}rn and Hilszczański, Jacek and Jaworski, Tomasz and Morini{\`e}re, J{\´e}r{\^o}me and Seidl, Rupert and Thorn, Simon and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg C.}, title = {Arthropod dark taxa provide new insights into diversity responses to bark beetle infestations}, series = {Ecological Applications}, volume = {32}, journal = {Ecological Applications}, number = {2}, doi = {10.1002/eap.2516}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276392}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Natural disturbances are increasing around the globe, also impacting protected areas. Although previous studies have indicated that natural disturbances result in mainly positive effects on biodiversity, these analyses mostly focused on a few well established taxonomic groups, and thus uncertainty remains regarding the comprehensive impact of natural disturbances on biodiversity. Using Malaise traps and meta-barcoding, we studied a broad range of arthropod taxa, including dark and cryptic taxa, along a gradient of bark beetle disturbance severities in five European national parks. We identified order-level community thresholds of disturbance severity and classified barcode index numbers (BINs; a cluster system for DNA sequences, where each cluster corresponds to a species) as negative or positive disturbance indicators. Negative indicator BINs decreased above thresholds of low to medium disturbance severity (20\%-30\% of trees killed), whereas positive indicator BINs benefited from high disturbance severity (76\%-98\%). BINs allocated to a species name contained nearly as many positive as negative disturbance indicators, but dark and cryptic taxa, particularly Diptera and Hymenoptera in our data, contained higher numbers of negative disturbance indicator BINs. Analyses of changes in the richness of BINs showed variable responses of arthropods to disturbance severity at lower taxonomic levels, whereas no significant signal was detected at the order level due to the compensatory responses of the underlying taxa. We conclude that the analyses of dark taxa can offer new insights into biodiversity responses to disturbances. Our results suggest considerable potential for forest management to foster arthropod diversity, for example by maintaining both closed-canopy forests (>70\% cover) and open forests (<30\% cover) on the landscape.}, language = {en} } @article{VogelPrinzingBussleretal.2021, author = {Vogel, Sebastian and Prinzing, Andreas and Bußler, Heinz and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Schmidt, Stefan and Thorn, Simon}, title = {Abundance, not diversity, of host beetle communities determines abundance and diversity of parasitoids in deadwood}, series = {Ecology and Evolution}, volume = {11}, journal = {Ecology and Evolution}, number = {11}, doi = {10.1002/ece3.7535}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-238892}, pages = {6881 -- 6888}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Most parasites and parasitoids are adapted to overcome defense mechanisms of their specific hosts and hence colonize a narrow range of host species. Accordingly, an increase in host functional or phylogenetic dissimilarity is expected to increase the species diversity of parasitoids. However, the local diversity of parasitoids may be driven by the accessibility and detectability of hosts, both increasing with increasing host abundance. Yet, the relative importance of these two mechanisms remains unclear. We parallelly reared communities of saproxylic beetle as potential hosts and associated parasitoid Hymenoptera from experimentally felled trees. The dissimilarity of beetle communities was inferred from distances in seven functional traits and from their evolutionary ancestry. We tested the effect of host abundance, species richness, functional, and phylogenetic dissimilarities on the abundance, species richness, and Shannon diversity of parasitoids. Our results showed an increase of abundance, species richness, and Shannon diversity of parasitoids with increasing beetle abundance. Additionally, abundance of parasitoids increased with increasing species richness of beetles. However, functional and phylogenetic dissimilarity showed no effect on the diversity of parasitoids. Our results suggest that the local diversity of parasitoids, of ephemeral and hidden resources like saproxylic beetles, is highest when resources are abundant and thereby detectable and accessible. Hence, in some cases, resources do not need to be diverse to promote parasitoid diversity.}, language = {en} } @article{RothDoerflerBaessleretal.2019, author = {Roth, Nicolas and Doerfler, Inken and B{\"a}ssler, Claus and Blaschke, Markus and Bussler, Heinz and Gossner, Martin M. and Heideroth, Antje and Thorn, Simon and Weisser, Wolfgang W. and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg}, title = {Decadal effects of landscape-wide enrichment of dead wood on saproxylic organisms in beech forests of different historic management intensity}, series = {Diversity and Distributions}, volume = {25}, journal = {Diversity and Distributions}, number = {3}, doi = {10.1111/ddi.12870}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-227061}, pages = {430-441}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Aim: European temperate forests have lost dead wood and the associated biodiversity owing to intensive management over centuries. Nowadays, some of these forests are being restored by enrichment with dead wood, but mostly only at stand scales. Here, we investigated effects of a seminal dead-wood enrichment strategy on saproxylic organisms at the landscape scale. Location: Temperate European beech forest in southern Germany. Methods: In a before-after control-impact design, we compared assemblages and gamma diversities of saproxylic organisms in strictly protected old-growth forest areas (reserves) and historically moderately and intensively managed forest areas before and a decade after starting a landscape-wide strategy of dead-wood enrichment. Results: Before enrichment with dead wood, the gamma diversity of saproxylic organisms in historically intensively managed forest stands was significantly lower than in reserves and historically moderately managed forest stands; this difference disappeared after 10 years of dead-wood enrichment. The species composition of beetles in forest stands of the three historical management intensities differed before the enrichment strategy, but a decade thereafter, the species compositions of previously intensively logged and forest reserve plots were similar. However, the differences in fungal species composition between historical management categories before and after 10 years of enrichment persisted. Main conclusions: Our results demonstrate that intentional enrichment of dead wood at the landscape scale is a powerful tool for rapidly restoring saproxylic beetle communities and for restoring wood-inhabiting fungal communities, which need longer than a decade for complete restoration. We propose that a strategy of area-wide active restoration combined with some permanent strict refuges is a promising means of promoting the biodiversity of age-long intensively managed Central European beech forests.}, language = {en} } @article{LeverkusThornGustafssonetal.2021, author = {Leverkus, Alexandro B. and Thorn, Simon and Gustafsson, Lena and Noss, Reed and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Pausas, Juli G. and Lindenmayer, David B.}, title = {Environmental policies to cope with novel disturbance regimes-steps to address a world scientists' warning to humanity}, series = {Environmental Research Letters}, volume = {16}, journal = {Environmental Research Letters}, number = {2}, issn = {1748-9326}, doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/abdc5a}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-254180}, year = {2021}, abstract = {No abstract available.}, language = {en} } @article{VogelGossnerMergneretal.2020, author = {Vogel, Sebastian and Gossner, Martin M. and Mergner, Ulrich and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Thorn, Simon}, title = {Optimizing enrichment of deadwood for biodiversity by varying sun exposure and tree species: An experimental approach}, series = {Journal of Applied Ecology}, volume = {57}, journal = {Journal of Applied Ecology}, number = {10}, doi = {10.1111/1365-2664.13648}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-214614}, pages = {2075 -- 2085}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The enrichment of deadwood is essential for the conservation of saproxylic biodiversity in managed forests. However, existing strategies focus on a cost-intensive increase of deadwood amount, while largely neglecting increasing deadwood diversity. Deadwood objects, that is logs and branches, from six tree species were experimentally sun exposed, canopy shaded and artificially shaded for 4 years, after which the alpha-, beta- and gamma-diversity of saproxylic beetles, wood-inhabiting fungi and spiders were analysed. Analyses of beta-diversity included the spatial distance between exposed deadwood objects. A random-drawing procedure was used to identify the combination of tree species and sun exposure that yielded the highest gamma-diversity at a minimum of exposed deadwood amount. In sun-exposed plots, species numbers in logs were higher than in shaded plots for all taxa, while in branches we observed the opposite for saproxylic beetles. Tree species affected the species numbers only of saproxylic beetles and wood-inhabiting fungi. The beta-diversity of saproxylic beetles and wood-inhabiting fungi among logs was influenced by sun exposure and tree species, but beta-diversity of spiders by sun exposure only. For all saproxylic taxa recorded in logs, differences between communities increased with increasing spatial distance. A combination of canopy-shaded Carpinus logs and sun-exposed Populus logs resulted in the highest species numbers of all investigated saproxylic taxa among all possible combinations of tree species and sun-exposure treatments. Synthesis and applications. We recommend incorporating the enrichment of different tree species and particularly the variation in sun exposure into existing strategies of deadwood enrichment. Based on the results of our study, we suggest to combine the logs of softwood broadleaf tree species (e.g. Carpinus, Populus), hardwood broadleaf tree species (e.g. Quercus) and coniferous tree species (e.g. Pinus) under different conditions of sun exposure and distribute them spatially in a landscape to maximize the beneficial effects on overall diversity.}, language = {en} } @article{MuellerUlyshenSeiboldetal.2020, author = {M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Ulyshen, Mike and Seibold, Sebastian and Cadotte, Marc and Chao, Anne and B{\"a}ssler, Claus and Vogel, Sebastian and Hagge, Jonas and Weiß, Ingmar and Baldrian, Petr and Tl{\´a}skal, Vojtěch and Thorn, Simon}, title = {Primary determinants of communities in deadwood vary among taxa but are regionally consistent}, series = {Oikos}, volume = {129}, journal = {Oikos}, number = {10}, doi = {10.1111/oik.07335}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-228201}, pages = {1579 -- 1588}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The evolutionary split between gymnosperms and angiosperms has far-reaching implications for the current communities colonizing trees. The inherent characteristics of dead wood include its role as a spatially scattered habitat of plant tissue, transient in time. Thus, local assemblages in deadwood forming a food web in a necrobiome should be affected not only by dispersal ability but also by host tree identity, the decay stage and local abiotic conditions. However, experiments simultaneously manipulating these potential community drivers in deadwood are lacking. To disentangle the importance of spatial distance and microclimate, as well as host identity and decay stage as drivers of local assemblages, we conducted two consecutive experiments, a 2-tree species and 6-tree species experiment with 80 and 72 tree logs, respectively, located in canopy openings and under closed canopies of a montane and a lowland forest. We sampled saproxylic beetles, spiders, fungi and bacterial assemblages from logs. Variation partitioning for community metrics based on a unified framework of Hill numbers showed consistent results for both studies: host identity was most important for sporocarp-detected fungal assemblages, decay stage and host tree for DNA-detected fungal assemblages, microclimate and decay stage for beetles and spiders and decay stage for bacteria. Spatial distance was of minor importance for most taxa but showed the strongest effects for arthropods. The contrasting patterns among the taxa highlight the need for multi-taxon analyses in identifying the importance of abiotic and biotic drivers of community composition. Moreover, the consistent finding of microclimate as the primary driver for saproxylic beetles compared to host identity shows, for the first time that existing evolutionary host adaptions can be outcompeted by local climate conditions in deadwood.}, language = {en} } @article{DoerflerCadotteWeisseretal.2020, author = {Doerfler, Inken and Cadotte, Marc W. and Weisser, Wolfgang W. and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Gossner, Martin M. and Heibl, Christoph and B{\"a}ssler, Claus and Thorn, Simon and Seibold, Sebastian}, title = {Restoration-oriented forest management affects community assembly patterns of deadwood-dependent organisms}, series = {Journal of Applied Ecology}, volume = {57}, journal = {Journal of Applied Ecology}, number = {12}, doi = {10.1111/1365-2664.13741}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-217918}, pages = {2429 -- 2440}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Land-use intensification leads to loss and degradation of habitats and is thus a major driver of biodiversity loss. Restoration strategies typically focus on promoting biodiversity but often neglect that land-use intensification could have changed the underlying mechanisms of community assembly. Since assembly mechanisms determine the diversity and composition of communities, we propose that evaluation of restoration strategies should consider effects of restoration on biodiversity and community assembly. Using a multi-taxon approach, we tested whether a strategy that promotes forest biodiversity by restoring deadwood habitats also affects assembly patterns. We assessed saproxylic (i.e. deadwood-dependent) beetles and fungi, as well as non-saproxylic plants and birds in 68 beech forest plots in southern Germany, 8 years after the commencement of a restoration project. To assess changes in community assembly, we analysed the patterns of functional-phylogenetic diversity, community-weighted mean (CWM) traits and their diversity. We hypothesized that restoration increases habitat amount and heterogeneity of deadwood and reduces canopy cover and thereby decreases the strength of environmental filters imposed by past silvicultural intensification, such as a low amount in deadwood. With the restoration of deadwood habitats, saproxylic beetle communities became less functionally-phylogenetically similar, whereas the assembly patterns of saproxylic fungi and non-saproxylic taxa remained unaffected by deadwood restoration. Among the traits analysed, deadwood diameter niche position of species was most strongly affected indicating that the enrichment of large deadwood objects led to lower functional-phylogenetical similarity of saproxylic beetles. Community assembly and traits of plants were mainly influenced by microclimate associated with changes in canopy cover. Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that the positive effects of deadwood restoration on saproxylic beetle richness are associated with an increase in deadwood amount. This might be linked to an increase in deadwood heterogeneity, and therefore decreasing management-induced environmental filters. Deadwood enrichment can thus be considered an effective restoration strategy which reduces the negative effects of intense forest management on saproxylic taxa by not only promoting biodiversity but also by decreasing the environmental filters shaping saproxylic beetle communities, thus allowing the possibly for more interactions between species and a higher functional diversity.}, language = {en} } @article{ThornChaoBernhardtRoemermannetal.2020, author = {Thorn, Simon and Chao, Anne and Bernhardt-R{\"o}mermann, Markus and Chen, Yan-Han and Georgiev, Kostadin B. and Heibl, Christoph and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Sch{\"a}fer, Hanno and B{\"a}ssler, Claus}, title = {Rare species, functional groups, and evolutionary lineages drive successional trajectories in disturbed forests}, series = {Ecology}, volume = {101}, journal = {Ecology}, number = {3}, doi = {10.1002/ecy.2949}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-212378}, pages = {e02949}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Following natural disturbances, additional anthropogenic disturbance may alter community recovery by affecting the occurrences of species, functional groups, and evolutionary lineages. However, our understanding of whether rare, common, or dominant species, functional groups, or evolutionary lineages are most strongly affected by an additional disturbance, particularly across multiple taxa, is limited. Here, we used a generalized diversity concept based on Hill numbers to quantify the community differences of vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, wood-inhabiting fungi, saproxylic beetles, and birds in a storm-disturbed, experimentally salvage logged forest. Communities of all investigated species groups showed dissimilarities between logged and unlogged plots. Most species groups showed no significant changes in dissimilarities between logged and unlogged plots over the first seven years of succession, indicating a lack of community recovery. In general, the dissimilarities of communities were mainly driven by rare species. Convergence of dissimilarities occurred more often than divergence during the early stages of succession for rare species, indicating a major role in driving decreasing taxonomic dissimilarities between logged and unlogged plots over time. Trends in species dissimilarities only partially match the trends in dissimilarities of functional groups and evolutionary lineages, with little significant changes in successional trajectories. Nevertheless, common and dominant species contributed to a convergence of dissimilarities over time in the case of the functional dissimilarities of wood-inhabiting fungi. Our study shows that salvage logging following disturbances can alter successional trajectories in early stages of forest succession following natural disturbances. However, community changes over time may differ remarkably in different taxonomic groups and are best detected based on taxonomic, rather than functional or phylogenetic dissimilarities.}, language = {en} } @article{VogelBusslerFinnbergetal.2021, author = {Vogel, Sebastian and Bussler, Heinz and Finnberg, Sven and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Stengel, Elisa and Thorn, Simon}, title = {Diversity and conservation of saproxylic beetles in 42 European tree species: an experimental approach using early successional stages of branches}, series = {Insect Conservation and Diversity}, volume = {14}, journal = {Insect Conservation and Diversity}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1111/icad.12442}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-218401}, pages = {132 -- 143}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Tree species diversity is important to maintain saproxylic beetle diversity in managed forests. Yet, knowledge about the conservational importance of single tree species and implications for forest management and conservation practices are lacking. We exposed freshly cut branch-bundles of 42 tree species, representing tree species native and non-native to Europe, under sun-exposed and shaded conditions for 1 year. Afterwards, communities of saproxylic beetles were reared ex situ for 2 years. We tested for the impact of tree species and sun exposure on alpha-, beta-, and gamma-diversity as well as composition of saproxylic beetle communities. Furthermore, the number of colonised tree species by each saproxylic beetle species was determined. Tree species had a lower impact on saproxylic beetle communities compared to sun exposure. The diversity of saproxylic beetles varied strongly among tree species, with highest alpha- and gamma-diversity found in Quercus petraea. Red-listed saproxylic beetle species occurred ubiquitously among tree species. We found distinct differences in the community composition of broadleaved and coniferous tree species, native and non-native tree species as well as sun-exposed and shaded deadwood. Our study enhances the understanding of the importance of previously understudied and non-native tree species for the diversity of saproxylic beetles. To improve conservation practices for saproxylic beetles and especially red-listed species, we suggest a stronger incorporation of tree species diversity and sun exposure of into forest management strategies, including the enrichment of deadwood from native and with a specific focus on locally rare or silviculturally less important tree species.}, language = {en} } @article{GeorgievChaoCastroetal.2020, author = {Georgiev, Kostadin B. and Chao, Anne and Castro, Jorge and Chen, Yan-Han and Choi, Chang-Yong and Fontaine, Joseph B. and Hutto, Richard L. and Lee, Eun-Jae and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Rost, Josep and Żmihorski, Michal and Thorn, Simon}, title = {Salvage logging changes the taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional successional trajectories of forest bird communities}, series = {Journal of Applied Ecology}, volume = {57}, journal = {Journal of Applied Ecology}, number = {6}, doi = {10.1111/1365-2664.13599}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-214887}, pages = {1103 -- 1112}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Salvage logging following natural disturbances may alter the natural successional trajectories of biological communities by affecting the occurrences of species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages. However, few studies have examined whether dissimilarities between bird communities of salvaged and unsalvaged forests are more pronounced for rare species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages than for their more common counterparts. We compiled data on breeding bird assemblages from nine study areas in North America, Europe and Asia, covering a 17-year period following wildfire or windstorm disturbances and subsequent salvage logging. We tested whether dissimilarities based on non-shared species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages (a) decreased or increased over time and (b) the responses of rare, common and dominant species varied, by using a unified statistical framework based on Hill numbers and null models. We found that dissimilarities between bird communities caused by salvage logging persisted over time for rare, common and dominant species, evolutionary lineages and for rare functional groups. Dissimilarities of common and dominant functional groups increased 14 years post disturbance. Salvage logging led to significantly larger dissimilarities than expected by chance. Functional dissimilarities between salvaged and unsalvaged sites were lower compared to taxonomic and phylogenetic dissimilarities. In general, dissimilarities were highest for rare, followed by common and dominant species. Synthesis and applications. Our research demonstrates that salvage logging did not decrease dissimilarities of bird communities over time and taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dissimilarities persisted for over a decade. We recommend resource managers and decision makers to reserve portions of disturbed forest to enable unmanaged post-disturbance succession of bird communities, particularly to conserve rare species found in unsalvaged disturbed forests.}, language = {en} } @article{ThornSeiboldLeverkusetal.2020, author = {Thorn, Simon and Seibold, Sebastian and Leverkus, Alexandro B and Michler, Thomas and M{\"u}ller, J{\"o}rg and Noss, Reed F and Stork, Nigel and Vogel, Sebastian and Lindenmayer, David B}, title = {The living dead: acknowledging life after tree death to stop forest degradation}, series = {Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment}, volume = {18}, journal = {Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment}, number = {9}, doi = {10.1002/fee.2252}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-218575}, pages = {505 -- 512}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Global sustainability agendas focus primarily on halting deforestation, yet the biodiversity crisis resulting from the degradation of remaining forests is going largely unnoticed. Forest degradation occurs through the loss of key ecological structures, such as dying trees and deadwood, even in the absence of deforestation. One of the main drivers of forest degradation is limited awareness by policy makers and the public on the importance of these structures for supporting forest biodiversity and ecosystem function. Here, we outline management strategies to protect forest health and biodiversity by maintaining and promoting deadwood, and propose environmental education initiatives to improve the general awareness of the importance of deadwood. Finally, we call for major reforms to forest management to maintain and restore deadwood; large, old trees; and other key ecological structures.}, language = {en} }