Drought-induced forest dieback increases taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of saproxylic beetles at both local and landscape scales

Abstract:
Context: Many forest ecosystems around the world are facing increasing drought-induced dieback, causing mortality patches across the landscape at multiple scales. This increases the supply of biological legacies and differentially affects forest insect communities.

Objectives: We analysed the relative effects of local- and landscape-level dieback on local saproxylic beetle assemblages. We assessed how classic concepts in spatial ecology (e.g., habitat-amount and habitat-patch hypotheses) are involved in relationships between multi-scale spatial patterns of available resources and local communities.

Methods: We sampled saproxylic beetle assemblages in commercial fir forests in the French highlands. Through automatic aerial mapping, we used percentage of dead tree crown pixels to assess dieback levels at several nested spatial scales. We analysed beetle taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity related to differing levels of multi-scale dieback.

Results: We found that taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of saproxylic beetle assemblages significantly benefitted from forest dieback, at both local and landscape scales. We detected significant effects in the multiplicative models combining local and landscape variables only for phylogenetic diversity. Increased landscape-scale dieback also caused a functional specialisation of beetle assemblages, favouring those related to large and well-decayed deadwood.

Conclusions: Increasing tree mortality under benign neglect provides conservation benefits by heterogenising the forest landscape and enhancing deadwood habitats. Legacy retention practices could take advantage of unharvested, declining forest stands to promote species richness and functional diversity within conventionally managed forest landscapes.