Saproxylic Insects and the Dilemmas of Dead Wood

New, Tim R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92222-5_8

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Fourth, the exposure of a local deadwood object to sunlight is another major factor structuring communities associated with deadwood (Heikkala et al 2016) as it determines microclimatic conditions (Pouska et al 2016). For instance, predatory taxa, such as spiders, are highly responsive to the sun exposure of deadwood (Entling et al 2007, New 2018). In general, arthropods as poikilotherm organisms are sensitive to climate (Müller et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primary determinants of communities in deadwood vary among taxa but are regionally consistent

Müller

Ulyshen

Seibold

et al. 2020

Oikos

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The evolutionary split between gymnosperms and angiosperms has far-reaching implications for the current communities colonizing trees. The inherent characteristics of dead wood include its role as a spatially scattered habitat of plant tissue, transient in time. Thus, local assemblages in deadwood forming a food web in a necrobiome should be affected not only by dispersal ability but also by host tree identity, the decay stage and local abiotic conditions. However, experiments simultaneously manipulating these potential community drivers in deadwood are lacking. To disentangle the importance of spatial distance and microclimate, as well as host identity and decay stage as drivers of local assemblages, we conducted two consecutive experiments, a 2-tree species and 6-tree species experiment with 80 and 72 tree logs, respectively, located in canopy openings and under closed canopies of a montane and a lowland forest. We sampled saproxylic beetles, spiders, fungi and bacterial assemblages from logs. Variation partitioning for community metrics based on a unified framework of Hill numbers showed consistent results for both studies: host identity was most important for sporocarp-detected fungal assemblages, decay stage and host tree for DNAdetected fungal assemblages, microclimate and decay stage for beetles and spiders and decay stage for bacteria. Spatial distance was of minor importance for most taxa but showed the strongest effects for arthropods. The contrasting patterns among the taxa highlight the need for multi-taxon analyses in identifying the importance of abiotic and biotic drivers of community composition. Moreover, the consistent finding of microclimate as the primary driver for saproxylic beetles compared to host identity shows, for the first time that existing evolutionary host adaptions can be outcompeted by local climate conditions in deadwood.

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