Revisitation of sites surveyed 19 years ago reveals impoverishment of longhorned beetles in natural and planted forests

Abstract

As planted forests expand in area, they are beginning to dominate landscapes as a matrix and cause the fragmentation of remaining natural forests. To understand and predict the responses of biological assemblages to maturing planted landscapes, examining the effects of forest type (natural vs planted) and forest age on such assemblages is particularly important. Therefore, to document the effects of forest type and age on longhorned beetle assemblages, in 2008 we collected beetles in broad-leaved natural and cedar planted forests where beetles had also been collected in 1989. Beetle species composition differed greatly between the two forest types in 1989, whereas this difference was less pronounced in 2008. Species richness and total abundance were higher in natural forests than in planted forests in 1989. In 2008, species richness had decreased in both forest types, but the difference between the two forest types had been maintained. Total abundance was also markedly lower in 2008, and the difference between forest types was much smaller. Although larval host plants were not associated with the responses of species to year (forest age or maturation), beetle species whose larvae fed on either broad-leaved or coniferous trees (or both) exhibited slight preferences for natural forests. These results suggest that longhorned beetle assemblages become impoverished in planted landscapes as the planted matrix matures. Changes in species composition with forest maturation may be difficult to predict based on larval host plants. However, consideration of larval host plants may enable the prediction of changes in species composition caused by the replacement of natural forests by planted forests.

Cerambycidae Associated with Hybrid Eucalyptus Urograndis and Native Vegetation in Carbonita, Minas Gerais State, Brazil

“…Monoculture forest plantations are known to affect community structure, such as abundance, but not species richness (Taki et al 2010). However, the diversity of this group might be greater in native vegetation than in the mosaic of native and planted forests (Yamaura et al 2011).…”

Predicting Long-Term Changes in Riparian Bird Communities in Floodplain Landscapes

“…Nevertheless, the complementary use of the two different approaches (e.g. a quasi-retrospective approach and a space-for-time substitution approach) was able to compensate for the potential limitations of each method (Fukami and Wardle, 2005;Yamaura et al, 2011). A similar framework was recently applied to studies on range expansions in introduced species (Thomaz et al, 2012); however, we propose that this framework should also be applied when examining long-term ecological consequences such as changes in floodplain landscapes after dam construction.…”

“…Retrospective approaches provide an alternative; temporal changes at specific sites are directly examined by surveying before and after environmental impacts (Rotenberry and Wiens, ; Gido et al ., ). However, ecological consequences identified using this approach may be confounded by concomitant forces such as long‐term climatic or land‐use changes (Yamaura et al ., ). Moreover, results from a few sites lack generality.…”

“…Thus, to make strong inferences about the impacts of environmental changes, the use of multiple approaches is important (e.g. both the space-for-time substitution approach and the retrospective approach) to examine long-term ecological consequences (Fukami and Wardle, 2005;Yamaura et al, 2011). However, the number of studies that have used both approaches to examine long-term ecological consequence of flow alterations across multiple sites is limited, even for major taxa such as aquatic insects or riparian vegetation (e.g.…”

Do revisitation studies overestimate local extinction?

“…In such studies, information on historical sites of species is mainly taken from old literature, such as publications on local floras and faunas (Drayton & Primack, 1996), historical field books (Steinbauer et al, 2018), or herbarium or museum specimens (Pyke & Ehrlich, 2010; Shaffer et al, 1998). Revisitation studies have mainly been conducted for plants (e.g., Bertin, 2002; Nilsson & Nilsson, 1982; Pyke & Ehrlich, 2010; Sutton & Morgan, 2009; Van Calster et al, 2008), and less often for animals (e.g., Yamaura et al, 2011), as the sessile nature of plants makes them more suited to such studies. Revisitation studies are used to examine whether a species still occurs at sites where it has historically been observed.…”