TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kortmann, Mareike
A1  - Roth, Nicolas
A1  - Buse, Jörn
A1  - Hilszczański, Jacek
A1  - Jaworski, Tomasz
A1  - Morinière, Jérôme
A1  - Seidl, Rupert
A1  - Thorn, Simon
A1  - Müller, Jörg C.
T1  - Arthropod dark taxa provide new insights into diversity responses to bark beetle infestations
JF  - Ecological Applications
N2  - 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.
KW  - arthropods
KW  - biodiversity
KW  - conservation
KW  - metabarcoding
KW  - national park
KW  - natural disturbance
KW  - threshold indicator taxa analysis
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276392
VL  - 32
IS  - 2
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kortmann, Mareike
A1  - Angelstam, Per
A1  - Mayer, Marius
A1  - Leibl, Franz
A1  - Reichert, Jessica
A1  - Thorn, Christine
A1  - Thorn, Simon
T1  - Disturbance severity and human–nature relationships: A new approach to analyze people’s well-being along a bark beetle infestation gradient
JF  - Forests
N2  - Contact to nature and greenspace is important for emotional well-being and can promote human health. Forest landscapes provide such access to greenspace, especially in protected areas. However, forested protected areas are impacted by natural disturbances such as bark beetle infestations. On the one hand, such disturbances have positive impacts on ecological processes and biodiversity. On the other hand, they have allegedly negative impacts on the recreational value of a landscape. Limited knowledge about the public’s perception of forests subject to natural disturbances still hampers forest management to balance ecological functions and visitors’ recreational experience. Thus, our aim was to determine how attitudes towards nature influence the personal well-being in a naturally disturbed landscape. We investigated self-reported well-being and attitudes towards nature in a standardized questionnaire-based survey of 1008 German inhabitants in an experimentally adapted landscape visualization. Self-reported well-being was generally highest in landscapes with relatively few bark-beetle-killed trees. This was especially the case for people who felt included with nature and preferred an appreciative use or preservation of nature. Conversely, people who had previously visited a national park with visible bark beetle infestations rated their personal well-being highest in landscapes with larger proportions of beetle-killed trees. Our results indicate that it is necessary to analyze people’s knowledge about and relations to forest landscapes as well as concepts of nature conservation, natural landscapes, and biodiversity to gain a better understanding of people’s perceptions of natural disturbances.
KW  - bark beetle disturbance
KW  - major environmental values
KW  - well-being
KW  - inclusion of nature in one’s self
KW  - national park
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-297429
SN  - 1999-4907
VL  - 13
IS  - 11
ER  -