Functional plasticity of carabids can presume better the changes in community composition than taxon-based descriptors

Abstract

Although the functional trait approach can facilitate the understanding of mechanisms that underline community responses to habitat alteration, only a few studies used this way on exploring the structure of insect assemblages compared to taxon-based analyses. We compared the descriptive power of medium-term effects (2014–2018) of forestry treatments in a temperate managed oak-dominated forest on taxon- vs. trait-based descriptors of ground beetle assemblages. The treatments included rotation forestry (partial preparation cutting, clear-cutting, retention-tree group, and mature closed forest as control) and continuous cover forestry (gap cutting) operations. The species composition was only slightly influenced by the treatments; on the ordination biplot, the control, retention tree group, and clear-cutting treatments formed relatively homogeneous groups, well separated from each other, while the others were scattered randomly in the ordination space. Over time, the species richness decreased in all treatments, but it was higher in the retention tree group treatment than in others in 2016 and 2017. The activity density also declined between years, but an immediate mass effect was revealed after the implementation of treatment types especially in the control, gap, and preparation cuts. We found that assemblages in the clear-cutting and retention-tree group had similar characteristics: high functional diversity; more open-habitat, generalist, and omnivore species and fewer carnivore species; while those in the control, gap, and preparation cutting groups had the opposite: lower functional diversity, more forest species, and more carnivorous species. Our findings will demonstrate that the simultaneous use of the two approaches will allow the most articulate understanding of the status of ground beetles assemblages in managed forests.