What factors influence colonization of lichens, liverworts, mosses and vascular plants on snags?

Abstract

The dead standing trees i.e. snags are known as habitat for epiphytic and epixylic species including first of all lichens and bryophytes. The vascular plants are much rarer on this type of coarse woody debris (CWD). The eighty snags (CWD elements higher than 1.5 m) of Norway spruce Picea abies and beech Fagus sylvatica in the Karkonosze Mts. were examined for the presence of lichens, liverworts, mosses and vascular plants. The height of snags, their decomposition stage, cover of bark, diameter at breast height (DBH) as well as site conditions (elevation, slope and aspect, presence in forest community) were measured and noted. The percent cover of plants and lichens were estimated on each snag. Totally 99 taxa were recorded. There lichen species were dominant (44), followed by mosses (34), liverworts (13) and there were only 8 vascular plants. The total species richness varied from 1 to 22 taxa. The species composition growing on snags was subjected to canonical correspondence analysis and statistical analyses. They revealed that the species identity of snag is one of the most important factors influencing species composition. The number of species is positively correlated with DBH whereas decomposition stage, presence of bark, snag height are not significant factors. The species richness increases also with altitude what is connected with higher abundance of spruce snags. The occurrence of snags in this area is mainly associated with forest management practices in the past. Despite of some observed patterns in colonization of snags they are important habitat especially for lichens.

Species–area relationship and small‐island effect of bryophytes on the Zhoushan Archipelago, China

“…Sfenthourakis and Triantis () also found that small islands had a lower specialist‐to‐generalist ratio than large islands and that the ratio linearly increased with island area. Liverworts are more likely than mosses to be specialists (Staniaszek‐Kik, Chmura, & Żarnowiec, ), and our results were consistent with these findings.…”

Multi-taxon conservation in northern forest hot-spots: the role of forest characteristics and spatial scales

“…Therefore, despite the complex nature of our results, they indicate that it is easier to find variables describing forest characteristics that predicts richness of macrofungi and lichens (12 and nine, respectively) than vascular plants and bryophytes (five and seven, respectively). This can be illustrated by a much higher proportion of macrofungal and lichen specialist species, compared to vascular plants and bryophytes (Nordén et al 2013;Staniaszek-Kik et al 2019). This was also true for the spruce and pine forest types (14 and nine forest characteristic variables, respectively), but not to the same extent for the mixed tree species types (five for deciduousconiferous mixed and seven for coniferous-mixed forests).…”

Plant community responses to changes in management

“…Standing wood in the Giant Mountains (Czech Republic) is an important habitat colonised mostly by lichens. Species diversity in this group is strongly linked to vegetation type and the occurrence of snags, the distribution of which is related to forest management introduced after dieback of spruce caused by pollution in the 1980s (Staniaszek-Kik et al 2019). A relationship between vegetation type and lichen distribution and diversity was also found by Vondrák and Kubásek (2019).…”

“…The abundance of standing deadwood and logs in different stages of decay is dependent on many factors. Natural and anthropogenic factors that influence the diversity of bryophytes and lichens found on deadwood and other organic substrates are discussed in the Special Issue (Staniaszek-Kik et al 2019;Vondrák and Kubásek 2019). Standing wood in the Giant Mountains (Czech Republic) is an important habitat colonised mostly by lichens.…”