History and environment shape species pools and community diversity in European beech forests

Jíménez-Alfaro, Borja; Girardello, Marco; Chytrý, Milan; Svenning, Jens‐Christian; Willner, Wolfgang; Gégout, Jean‐Claude; Agrillo, Emiliano; Campos, Juan Antonio; Jandt, Ute; Kącki, Zygmunt; Šilc, Urban; Slezák, Michal; Tichý, Lubomír; Tsiripidis, Ioannis; Turtureanu, Pavel Dan; Ujházyová, Mariana; Wohlgemuth, Thomas

doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0462-6

Cited by 91 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Furthermore, in our assessment, most variation occurred across forest sites, rather than along the above-ground live carbon gradient. This is in agreement with previous research, which highlighted the importance of broad-scale drivers, including macroclimate and the regional species pool, as determinants of forest finescale biodiversity (Jiménez-Alfaro et al, 2018;Sullivan et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Trade‐offs between carbon stocks and biodiversity in European temperate forests

Sabatini

Andrade

Paillet³

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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Policies to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss often assume that protecting carbon‐rich forests provides co‐benefits in terms of biodiversity, due to the spatial congruence of carbon stocks and biodiversity at biogeographic scales. However, it remains unclear whether this holds at the scales relevant for management, and particularly large knowledge gaps exist for temperate forests and for taxa other than trees. We built a comprehensive dataset of Central European temperate forest structure and multi‐taxonomic diversity (beetles, birds, bryophytes, fungi, lichens, and plants) across 352 plots. We used Boosted Regression Trees (BRTs) to assess the relationship between above‐ground live carbon stocks and (a) taxon‐specific richness, (b) a unified multidiversity index. We used Threshold Indicator Taxa ANalysis to explore individual species’ responses to changing above‐ground carbon stocks and to detect change‐points in species composition along the carbon‐stock gradient. Our results reveal an overall weak and highly variable relationship between richness and carbon stock at the stand scale, both for individual taxonomic groups and for multidiversity. Similarly, the proportion of win‐win and trade‐off species (i.e., species favored or disadvantaged by increasing carbon stock, respectively) varied substantially across taxa. Win‐win species gradually replaced trade‐off species with increasing carbon, without clear thresholds along the above‐ground carbon gradient, suggesting that community‐level surrogates (e.g., richness) might fail to detect critical changes in biodiversity. Collectively, our analyses highlight that leveraging co‐benefits between carbon and biodiversity in temperate forest may require stand‐scale management that prioritizes either biodiversity or carbon in order to maximize co‐benefits at broader scales. Importantly, this contrasts with tropical forests, where climate and biodiversity objectives can be integrated at the stand scale, thus highlighting the need for context‐specificity when managing for multiple objectives. Accounting for critical change‐points of target taxa can help to deal with this specificity, by defining a safe operating space to manipulate carbon while avoiding biodiversity losses.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Trade‐offs between carbon stocks and biodiversity in European temperate forests

Sabatini

Andrade

Paillet³

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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“…Jiménez‐Alfaro et al. () also showed that biogeographical and climatic factors filter plant species richness in European beech forest on the regional species pool level and that only small operative habitat conditions further alter local species diversity. Although the lifestyles of saproxylic beetles and saproxylic fungi highly differ, a functional filter dominated on the regional pool of both groups.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…proximity to refugia, can be used (e.g. Jiménez‐Alfaro et al., ). However, proximity to refugia based on a climatic suitability model of European beech in the last glacial maximum can be applied with different potential paleoclimatic scenarios and still neglects effects of landscape topography during re‐colonization.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Congruent patterns of functional diversity in saproxylic beetles and fungi across European beech forests

Hagge

Abrego

Bässler

et al. 2019

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Beech forests comprise a globally unique temperate forest type in Europe. The dominance of beech in these forests developed during the ongoing post‐glacial northward re‐colonization, concurrently with intensified forest use by humans. We investigated how these two processes together with climate shaped the patterns of functional diversity of two major species groups involved in wood decomposition and whether functional diversity is determined on the local or regional species pool level. Location European beech forest distribution range. Taxon Saproxylic beetles and fungi. Methods We analysed records of 532,496 saproxylic beetles of 788 species and 8,630 records of 234 saproxylic fungal species based on sets of traits similar to both groups. We tested how space, climate and landscape composition affect trait‐based functional diversity on local and regional scales. Using structural equation modelling, we tested whether functional diversity is shaped on the local or regional scale. Results The response of local functional diversity of both saproxylic beetles and fungi followed a highly congruent pattern of decreasing functional diversity towards the north, with higher elevation and accounted for overall geographical gradients with higher temperature, while increasing with higher precipitation. Structural equation modelling revealed that local functional diversity is determined by community changes operating on the level of the regional species pool. Main conclusions Our findings suggest that the functional diversity patterns of saproxylic organisms in European beech forests are mainly determined on the regional scale and driven by anthropogenic and biogeographical processes. To conserve the variation and hotspots of functional diversity in beech forests, activities have to focus on a broad spatial and climatic range of sites throughout Europe, including the primeval forests in the east, as started by the UNESCO World Heritage selection of “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”.

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“…A vast majority of species‐richness models for European habitats does not include any millennial‐scale historical factors (Janišová et al, ), except the LGM (e.g. Jiménez‐Alfaro et al, ) or older evolutionary history (Pither & Aarssen, ; Zobel et al, ). Fordham et al () call for a more thorough consideration of past climate changes in explaining present‐day biodiversity patterns because even decadal to centennial climate changes seem to be important.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene matters: Landscape history accounts for current species richness of vascular plants in forests and grasslands of eastern Central Europe

Divíšek

Hájek

Jamrichová

et al. 2020

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Current species‐richness patterns are sometimes interpreted as a legacy of landscape history, but historical processes shaping the distribution of species during the Holocene are frequently omitted in biodiversity models. Here, we test their importance in modelling current species richness of vascular plants in forest and grassland vegetation. Location Western Carpathians and adjacent regions. Taxon Vascular plants. Methods Numbers of all species and of habitat specialists were extracted from plot records of forest and grassland vegetation. For each plot, environmental and historical data were derived from thematic maps. Historical data related to the persistence of (a) temperate taxa during the Late Glacial and Early Holocene, (b) open‐landscape taxa during the Middle Holocene and (c) taiga taxa during the Late Holocene were based on 112 fossil pollen profiles. Boosted regression trees were used to model spatial patterns in species richness. Results Historical variables always appeared among the best predictors of current species richness. In light forests, species richness highly mirrored both the Late Glacial (12.5% contribution) and Middle‐Holocene (8.6%) landscape history. The latter factor became an important predictor also for species richness of steppe grasslands (8.3%) along with temperature seasonality (11.9%). Species richness of dark coniferous forests was best predicted by the Late‐Holocene occurrence of taiga forests (14.8%), which had an even stronger effect on the richness of habitat specialists (20.5%). Main conclusions Landscape changes since the Last Glacial Maximum are important predictors of current plant species richness. The historical effects were found to be habitat specific and, because they may interact with recent environmental conditions and anthropogenic pressures, they often show a nonlinear relationship with species richness. We provide one possible direction of incorporating past landscape changes to the models of species richness.

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History and environment shape species pools and community diversity in European beech forests

Cited by 91 publications

References 55 publications

Trade‐offs between carbon stocks and biodiversity in European temperate forests

Trade‐offs between carbon stocks and biodiversity in European temperate forests

Congruent patterns of functional diversity in saproxylic beetles and fungi across European beech forests

Holocene matters: Landscape history accounts for current species richness of vascular plants in forests and grasslands of eastern Central Europe

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