Ecology versus society: Impacts of bark beetle infestations on biodiversity and restorativeness in protected areas of Central Europe

Kortmann, Mareike; Müller, Jörg; Baier, Roland; Bässler, Claus; Buse, Jörn; Cholewińska, Olga; Förschler, Marc I.; Georgiev, Kostadin B.; Hilszczański, Jacek; Jaroszewicz, Bogdan; Jaworski, Tomasz; Kaufmann, Stefan; Kuijper, Dries P. J.; Lorz, Janina; Lotz, Annette; Łubek, Anna; Mayer, Marius; Mayerhofer, Simone; Meyer, Stefan; Morinière, Jérôme; Popa, Flavius; Reith, Hannah; Roth, Nicolas; Seibold, Sebastian; Seidl, Rupert; Stengel, Elisa; Wolski, Grzegorz J.; Thorn, Simon

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108931

Cited by 32 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…However, species composition changed significantly with the level of dieback, driven mainly by rare species. Comparable changes in insect species composition but stable insect species richness have been observed in response to pest-induced forest dieback of other tree species 22,33 , and the fact that similar observations have been made in aquatic insect communities over time 17 suggests that our findings are indicative of broad patterns.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

“…Similar bias toward these well-known insect groups is also identifiable in studies on pest-induced forest dieback with an additional focus on red-listed species 10 , or in the studies considered in Thom and Seidl's meta-analysis 14 . From this detailed taxonomic view 15 and recent comprehensive studies 22,33 , insect positive response to disturbances must be taken cautiously as it could be biased towards the response of the better studied insect groups only.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate-induced forest dieback drives compositional change in insect communities that is concentrated amongst rare species

Sire

Cai

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Marked decline in insect species richness, abundance and biomass have recently been quantified in Europe. We metabarcoded 224 Malaise-trap samples to investigate whether drought-induced forest dieback and subsequent salvage logging have an impact on flying insects (ca. 3000 insect species) in silver fir Pyrenean forests. We found no evidence that climate-induced forest dieback impacted species richness of flying insects but revealed compositional turnover patterns consistent with those seen during natural forest succession, given that the key covariates explaining compositional variation were canopy openness versus microhabitat diversity and deadwood amount at local and landscape scales, respectively. Importantly, most change was driven by rare species. In contrast, observed levels of salvage logging did not explain change in species richness or composition. Hence, although forest dieback appears to cause changes in species assemblages mimicking natural forest succession, it also increases the risk of catastrophic loss of rare species through homogenization of environmental conditions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate-induced forest dieback drives compositional change in insect communities that is concentrated amongst rare species

Sire

Cai

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…The disturbance gradient is therefore slightly imbalanced in Białowieża (see Figure 1). The study design was also described in Kortmann et al (2021)).…”

Section: Study Areas and Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arthropod dark taxa provide new insights into diversity responses to bark beetle infestations

Kortmann

Roth

Buse

et al. 2022

Ecological Applications

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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.

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“…The negative effect of salvage logging, which on average reduces the amounts of deadwood by at least 75% (Priewasser et al, 2013;Thorn et al, 2015), on the number of P. grossa individuals is likely to be even larger than reported as 20-fold in our investigation, considering that the salvage logging sites in our comparison were in the direct vicinity of the unmanaged sites, from which single individuals could distribute. Bark beetle outbreaks have been shown to pose no threat to the major goals of protected areas (Kortmann et al, 2021) and new methods of bark beetle control, for example, bark scratching, do not impede the development of other saproxylic beetles (Thorn et al, 2017). With the growing number of reported disturbance events (Seidl et al, 2014), increasing evidence of the negative effects of salvage logging on threatened species and on the integrity of natural processes (Leverkus et al, 2018;Thorn et al, 2017;Thorn et al, 2018), as well as recent court rulings in which salvage logging in Natura 2000 was deemed to be unlawful (Schiermeier, 2018), postdisturbance logging is no longer an option in protected areas established to conserve a high level of biodiversity (Müller et al, 2019).…”

Section: Natural Disturbances and Forest Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest dieback in a protected area triggers the return of the primeval forest specialistPeltis grossa(Coleoptera, Trogossitidae)

Busse

Čížek

Čížková

et al. 2022

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Forest set-aside is a commonly employed conservation strategy, but large-scale disturbances regularly evoke discussions on its utility for biodiversity conservation in former production forests. In this study, we reconstructed the return of a primeval forest specialist, the beetle Peltis grossa (Linnaeus, 1758) of the family Trogossitidae, to two national parks after more than a century of absence.

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Ecology versus society: Impacts of bark beetle infestations on biodiversity and restorativeness in protected areas of Central Europe

Cited by 32 publications

References 68 publications

Climate-induced forest dieback drives compositional change in insect communities that is concentrated amongst rare species

Climate-induced forest dieback drives compositional change in insect communities that is concentrated amongst rare species

Arthropod dark taxa provide new insights into diversity responses to bark beetle infestations

Forest dieback in a protected area triggers the return of the primeval forest specialistPeltis grossa(Coleoptera, Trogossitidae)

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