Responses of soil microarthropod taxon (Hexapoda: Protura) to natural disturbances and management practices in forest-dominated subalpine lake catchment areas

Abstract

Disturbances are intrinsic drivers of structure and function in ecosystems, hence predicting their effects in forest ecosystems is essential for forest conservation and/or management practices. Yet, knowledge regarding belowground impacts of disturbance events still remains little understood and can greatly vary by taxonomic and functional identity, disturbance type and local environmental conditions. To address this gap in knowledge, we conducted a survey of soil-dwelling Protura, across forests subjected to different disturbance regimes (i.e. windstorms, insect pest outbreaks and clear-cut logging). We expected that the soil proturan assemblages would differ among disturbance regimes. We also hypothesized that these differences would be driven primarily by variation in soil physicochemical properties thus the impacts of forest disturbances would be indirect and related to changes in food resources. To verify that sampling included two geographically distant subalpine glacial lake catchments that differed in underlying geology, each having four different types of forest disturbance, i.e. control, bark beetle outbreak (BB), windthrow + BB (wind + BB) and clear-cut. As expected, forest disturbance had negative effects on proturan diversity and abundance, with multiple disturbances having the greatest impacts. However, differences in edaphic factors constituted a stronger driver of variability in distribution and abundance of proturans assemblages. These results imply that soil biogeochemistry and resource availability can have much stronger effects on proturan assemblages than forest disturbances. Disturbances, natural and anthropogenic, are a common and intrinsic element of temperate forest ecosystems 1 and play an important role in forest dynamics 2. Seidl et al. 3 have documented that across Europe, forest disturbance regimes have intensified markedly due to considerable increases in damage from insect outbreaks, windstorms and/or wildfires. As a result, growing disturbance risk necessitates greater attention to the management of the forest ecosystem 4. Disturbance events such as insect outbreaks, windstorms and forest management practices applied after natural disturbances can strongly modulate forest structure, functioning and biodiversity 5,6 , and affect the natural, beneficial roles played by forests. Despite this the responses of species and taxa that inhabit

Impact of forest disturbance on microarthropod communities depends on underlying ecological gradients and species traits

“…2 and 3 ). Our results are consistent with previous studies based on morphologically identified microarthropod communities showing negative effects of windstorm and salvage logging on springtails ( Čuchta, Miklisová & Kováč, 2019 ; Sławski & Sławska, 2019 ), soil mites ( Lóšková et al, 2013 ; Wehner et al, 2021b ), and proturans ( Sterzyńska et al, 2020 ). Literature evidence showed that post-disturbance communities are mainly constituted by few high-adaptable species, such as Tectocepheus sp.…”

Changes in the Number of Vascular Plant Species during Reforestation of Clearcut Forests

“…The main difference between natural disturbances and commercial clearcutting is that in the latter case, the main part of tree biomass is removed, while for natural disturbances it all remains on the site. Therefore, the processes in the upper soil layers [36] and the species composition of fungi [37], insects [38], and other groups of organisms [39,40] are also different. The number of vascular plant species can increase after windthrow, but not as dramatically as in clearcuts [12,41], although changes in the abundance of some herbaceous species can be significant [12,42].…”