Insects and Forest Succession

Abstract

There is a long-standing, even ancient, belief in Western thought that forests, particularly unmanaged forests relatively free from obvious human impacts, are never-changing; this is the connotation of the German word “urwald” or “original forest” that influenced early thinking on forests from the origins of the emerging scientific disciplines of forestry and ecology in the 1800s. However, all forests, including extant ancient forests, are in fact in a state of flux.

A comprehensive framework for vegetation succession

“…This is related to LUI in the case of livestock density, or related to landscape integrity and conservation status in the case of wild herbivore populations (arrows 14). A relatively small set of insect species (mostly bark beetles and moths) can cause stand-replacing disturbance events by killing most canopy trees in a short time (Thomas, 2023). As insects tend to be specialized, such stand-replacing disturbance events only occur in boreal and northern temperate forests where only few tree species coexist (Thomas, 2023).…”

“…A relatively small set of insect species (mostly bark beetles and moths) can cause stand-replacing disturbance events by killing most canopy trees in a short time (Thomas, 2023). As insects tend to be specialized, such stand-replacing disturbance events only occur in boreal and northern temperate forests where only few tree species coexist (Thomas, 2023). Examples are the mountain pine beetle that impacts Pinus contorta in the United States, or the European spruce bark beetle that impacts Picea abies in Europe.…”