Effects of climate and land use on arthropod biodiversity in deadwood
Deadwood is an important carbon and nutrient pool and provides habitat for approximately one third of all forest species. Forest management influences decomposition rates and biodiversity in deadwood by affecting microclimatic conditions and habitat structure. Climate change, and particularly drought periods, also affect processes and communities in deadwood, as many species depend on specific moisture conditions. However, our understanding of these effects of climate change remains limited, as microclimatic conditions in deadwood are influenced by various factors operating at different spatial scales.
The aim of BEClimWood-Bugs is to better understand how forest land-use intensity and climate influence arthropod communities in deadwood across different spatial scales. To address this, the project uses the experimental design of the new multi-site experiment BEClimWood, in which deadwood logs are experimentally manipulated along climatic and land-use gradients, both through rainout shelters – simulating a summer drought – and through different soil-contact regimes which further alters deadwood microclimate. This will allow us to better understand the effects of summer drought, forest land-use intensity and soil contact on deadwood-associated arthropods.
The project will address three central research questions:
- What are the interactive effects of soil contact and reduced precipitation on arthropod communities in deadwood, and how do these effects differ between macroclimatic regions?
- Do the interactive effects of soil contact and reduced precipitation on arthropod communities in deadwood differ between different levels of land-use intensity?
- Do the interactive effects of soil contact, reduced precipitation and land-use intensity differ among arthropod groups?
A total of 108 logs, half of them pine and the other half beech, were placed on selected VIP plots in each region of the Biodiversity Exploratories and assigned to different treatments. Half of the logs were placed under rainout shelters that exclude 60 % of precipitation. One third of the logs was buried 10 cm into the soil, one third was placed directly on the ground, and one third was elevated on stones in order to simulate three different soil-contact regimes. During the summer months, arthropods are collected monthly using stem emergence traps. Beetles are identified traditionally by taxonomic experts, while metabarcoding is used for other arthropod groups. This approach provides a comprehensive picture of arthropod biodiversity patterns and their drivers and covers a broad range of taxa that have so far been little studied. The diversity of arthropod communities will be quantified along the Hill series in order to investigate potential differences between the responses of rare and common species.
Scientific assistants
