High‐resolution 3D forest structure explains ecomorphological trait variation in assemblages of saproxylic beetles

Abstract

1. Climate, topography and the 3D structure of forests are major drivers affecting local species communities. However, little is known about how the specific functional traits of saproxylic (wood-living) beetles, involved in the recycling of wood, might be affected by those environmental characteristics.2. Here, we combine ecological and morphological traits available for saproxylic beetles and airborne laser scanning (ALS) data in Bayesian trait-based joint species distribution models to study how traits drive the distributions of more than 230 species in temperate forests of Europe.3. We found that elevation (as a proxy for temperature and precipitation) and the proportion of conifers played important roles in species occurrences while variables related to habitat heterogeneity and forest complexity were less relevant. Furthermore, we showed that local communities were shaped by environmental variation primarily through their ecological traits whereas morphological traits were involved only marginally. As predicted, ecological traits influenced species' responses to forest structure, and to other environmental variation, with canopy niche, wood decay niche and host preference as the most important ecological traits. Conversely, no links between morphological traits and environmentalThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Animal functional traits: Towards a trait‐based ecology for whole ecosystems

“…Recent progress in the availability of global trait datasets (Griffith et al, 2023; Pincheira‐Donoso et al, 2023; Tobias et al, 2022) provides the basis for testing long‐standing questions on global biodiversity patterns with trait‐based approaches. Many of the studies included in this Special Focus worked on large spatial scales across elevational (Drag et al, 2023) and latitudinal gradients (Ferrín et al, 2023; Ibarra‐Isassi et al, 2023; Srivastava et al, 2023), or even covered the entire globe (Ali et al, 2023; Crouch & Jablonski, 2023; Pincheira‐Donoso et al, 2023). Importantly, these large‐scale analyses are no longer restricted to vertebrates (Etard et al, 2020), but are now also possible for many invertebrate groups including ants, beetles, springtails and aquatic macroinvertebrates.…”

“…Measurements and analyses of specific functional traits, however, do not necessarily outperform the predictive power of soft ecological traits. For instance, the morphological traits of wood‐inhabiting beetles were less informative about their environmental preferences compared to an integrative ecological classification of species (Drag et al, 2023), although whether this is because the relevant morphological traits remained unmeasured is difficult to determine. This demonstrates that, as functional ecologists, we need to continue the quest for the most informative traits.…”

“…As a prime example, trait‐based ecology has gathered ample evidence that the downsizing of ecological communities by the selective extinction of the largest organisms and their functional traits reduces ecosystem functioning (Dirzo et al, 2014; Enquist et al, 2020; Fricke et al, 2022). The studies in this Special Focus demonstrate that the step from species‐level to ecosystem‐level understanding can now principally be taken for many types of ecosystem functions, such as litter and wood decomposition by springtails and beetles (Drag et al, 2023; Ferrín et al, 2023), pollination and seed predation by birds and insects (Neu et al, 2023), or avian seed dispersal and arthropod predation (Peña et al, 2023). Taking this step by means of trait‐based analyses enables ecologists to predict global‐change impacts on ecosystem functioning and contributes key knowledge to ecosystem and conservation management.…”

Alternative measures of trait–niche relationships: A test on dispersal traits in saproxylic beetles

“…These results highlight the difficulty in linking morphological traits to species niches (Barton et al, 2011;Drag et al, 2023). This is true even when following a recommended hypothesis framework (Brousseau et al, 2018) for an apparently straightforward function (dispersal) and set of traits (wing morphology), using covariates that contribute directly to habitat connectivity.…”

Diversity – volume relationships: adding structural arrangement and volume to species – area relationships across forest macrosystems

“…Structural diversity of sessile biotic ecosystem components (e.g. plants, corals) can have a positive relationship with the taxonomic or trait diversity of species (Helder et al 2022), but may not always have a strong effect on a particular taxonomic group of plant or animals (Drag et al 2023). Finally, there has been recent interest in quantifying the 3D niche of ecosystems and how this influences wildlife behavior, habitat use, population dynamics, and community diversity (e.g.…”