Critical tests for lichen indicators of woodland ecological continuity

Oceanic and temperate rainforest climates and their epiphyte indicators in Britain

“…Examples again include elements of the Lobarion community (James et al, 1977;Rose, 1988), which can be relatively widespread and locally abundant in the British zone of oceanic/temperate rainforest. However, these same species, including the widely recognised Lobaria pulmonaria, tend to occur outside the oceanic/temperate rainforest zone in locally suitable microhabitats that are often associated with old-growth woodland (Coppins and Coppins, 2002;Whittet and Ellis, 2013).…”

Open Structured Woodland and the Ecological Interpretation of Scotland's Ancient Woodland Inventory

“…7 habitat, such as epiphytes growing directly on the bark surface, the break in continuity represented by a Class 3 designation could be considered ecologically to have reset the starting point in terms of colonisation and establishment into the woodland habitat. Class 3 woodlands would not be expected to be suitable for certain of these species -that is, ancient woodland indicator epiphytes (Whittet & Ellis 2013) -in an enumeration of suitable habitat within the present-day landscape. However, in a significant proportion of cases, Class 3 woodland is shown to be spatially congruent with scattered tree symbols at various densities, suggesting that for many AWI Class 3 localities, some form of open woodland may have existed continuously over at least several centuries.…”

“…Near-natural woodlands with long continuity can be a shifting mosaic of ecological conditions (Emborg et al 2000), and in other cases, woodlands may have existed in the long term, but have undergone intensive management, and a process of simplification that reduces the overall biodiversity value, as is the case among Scotland's oak coppice woodland (Smout 2005;Smout et al 2007). Nevertheless, it is only for woodlands with continuity, such as ancient woodlands, that high-quality habitat has the potential for long-term persistence (Whittet & Ellis 2013). Thus, certain ancient woodlands provide key habitats for species which are threatened by forest loss, from across taxonomic groups, for example, from mammals (Bright et al 1994) to invertebrates (Assmann 1999).…”

Response of epiphytic lichens to 21st Century climate change and tree disease scenarios

“…indicators of 'ecological continuity' (Coppins and Coppins, 2002), a property associated with ancient woodland stands that retain stability of specialist microhabitats (Whittet and Ellis, 2013). Dependency on ancient woodlands has previously focussed on a subset of 'indicator' species (Rose, 1976;Tibell, 1992) whose restricted distribution could be attributed to niche specialism and a requirement for old-growth structure (Ohlson et al, 1997), or dispersallimitation and a requirement for extended 'time-to-colonisation' (Keon and Muir, 2002).…”