Response of moth communities (Lepidoptera) to forest management strategies after disturbance

Abstract

http://www.eje.cz tem engineer species important for biodiversity (Beudert et al., 2015; Przepióra et al., 2020).A forest manager that has to deal with bark beetles has different possibilities for reacting to a disturbed forest site. The most invasive method is to remove all trees along with the bark beetles (salvage logging), which usually results in a large-scale clear-cut. With most fresh deadwood removed, the carbon storage capacity of a forest is reduced considerably (Dobor et al., 2020). Simultaneously, natural regeneration, microclimatic stability and protective function of deadwood are often reduced (Jonášová & Prach, 2008;Thorn et al., 2014; Leverkus et al., 2021). To keep more deadwood in the forest, other less invasive methods such as gouging or removing the bark from infested trees are suggested (Thorn et al., 2016;Hagge et al., 2019). These methods block the development of bark beetles, which live under the bark, while at the same time, most of the deadwood is kept in the forest and, therefore, can serve as a habitat for many saproxylic species (Fig. 1).

Low accuracy bark gouging controls Ips typographus outbreaks while conserving non-target beetle diversity

“…Furthermore, maintaining the tree trunk biomass in the forest promotes nutrition supply and water retention, reduces browsing pressure of deer on regeneration (Hagge et al, 2019b), provides substrate for recruitment (Zielonka, 2006) and supports multiple aspects of forest biodiversity (Thorn et al, 2018). Conversely, with salvage logging after disturbances saproxylic biodiversity (Georgiev et al, 2020;Thorn et al, 2020;Uhl et al, 2023) as well as ecosystem resilience (Leverkus et al, 2021) are compromised. Thus, on-site bark beetle control measures, which maintain the tree biomass in the forest stand and decrease the population of insect pests are increasingly promoted to combine multiple purposes of forest use (Hagge et al, 2019a).…”