Coppicing and topsoil removal promote diversity of dung‐inhabiting beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae, Geotrupidae, Staphylinidae) in forests

Abstract

Central European forests experience a substantial loss of open‐forest organisms due to forest management and increasing nitrogen deposition. However, management strategies, removing different levels of nitrogen, have been rarely evaluated simultaneously. We tested the additive effects of coppicing and topsoil removal on communities of dung‐inhabiting beetles compared to closed forests. We sampled 57 021 beetles, using baited pitfall traps exposed on 27 plots. Experimental treatments resulted in significantly different communities by promoting open‐habitat species. While alpha diversity did not differ among treatments, gamma diversity of Geotrupidae and Scarabaeidae and beta diversity of Staphylinidae were higher in coppice than in forest. Functional diversity of rove beetles was higher in both, coppice and topsoil‐removed plots, compared to control plots. This was likely driven by higher habitat heterogeneity in established forest openings. Five dung beetle species and four rove beetle species benefitted from coppicing, one red‐listed dung beetle and two rove beetle species benefitted from topsoil removal. Our results demonstrate that dung‐inhabiting beetles related to open forest patches can be promoted by both, coppicing and additional topsoil removal. A mosaic of coppice and bare‐soil‐rich patches can hence promote landscape‐level gamma diversity of dung and rove beetles within forests.

Biology and seasonal population dynamics of the forest dung beetle Anoplotrupes stercorosus (Coleoptera: Geotrupidae) in the Center of European Russia

“…Our data show that Anoplotrupes stercorosus occurs very frequently and in high numbers in mixed forests with a well-defined shrub layer and herbaceous cover, complex pine forests, deciduous forests. Similar results have been obtained in different parts of its range [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. There are reports that a higher content of fine sand in forest soils had a positive effect on the abundance of Anoplotrupes stercorosus.…”

Negative effects of forest gaps on dung removal in a full‐factorial experiment

“…Unsurprisingly, species communities across taxa thus differ in gaps and open forests, and may also be more diverse (e.g. Ambrožová et al, 2022; Eckerter et al, 2022; Lettenmaier et al, 2022). However, for dung beetles we found lower diversity and biomass in gaps than in controls.…”

“…Even though habitat selection of dung beetles can occur at small spatial scales (Perrin et al, 2021), the experimental gaps are potentially too small and open patches in forests too sparse to provide habitat for open land species. Being organisms depending on a scarce and patchy resource (Hanski & Cambefort, 1991) equipped with highly efficient olfaction to locate dung (Wurmitzer et al, 2017), these open land species could be promoted by opening forest canopies (Ambrožová et al, 2022; Nichols et al, 2007) and should at least theoretically be able to disperse into gaps. An alternative explanation for the limited functional substitution is that in particular large‐bodied open land species have declined in Central Europe during the last decades due to intensified land use (Buse et al, 2018; Buse & Entling, 2020), while communities in forests have maintained their large species that have a high contribution to dung removal (Nervo et al, 2014).…”