DOI: 10.5061/dryad.gp898f1
title: Data from: Effects of natural forest dynamics on vascular plant, bryophyte, and lichen diversity in primeval Fagus sylvatica forests and comparison with production forests

description: 1. Stand structure, mean tree age, deadwood amount and microclimate all
 change markedly in the course of natural forest dynamics. The last
 remaining primeval forests of the temperate forest biome are valuable
 study objects to investigate the effects of forest dynamics and management
 on forest structure and function as well as phytodiversity, which is not
 sufficiently understood. 2. Three pairs of Fagus sylvatica primeval and
 production forests in eastern Slovakia were selected for studying the
 effects of natural forest development stages on vascular plant, bryophyte,
 and lichen species richness and composition. We further compared the
 diversity patterns in the initial, optimal and terminal stages of forest
 development with those of nearby production forests. 3. The plot-level
 species richness of epiphytic bryophytes and lichens increased from the
 initial to the terminal stage, but only lichens exhibited a significantly
 higher cumulative species richness (γ diversity) in the later (optimal and
 terminal) stages. No increase in species richness from the initial to the
 terminal stage was found for deadwood-inhabiting epiphytes and the
 ground-layer vascular plants. Canonical correspondence analyses identified
 characteristic bryophyte and lichen species for the different development
 stages, while the bulk of vascular ground layer species occurred across
 all stages with no stage preference. 4. Stem diameter was an even more
 important driver of epiphyte diversity and species composition than the
 development stage. All stages of the primeval forests (including the
 initial) were more species-rich in epiphytes and, when investigating
 larger plot numbers, also in vascular plants than the production forests.
 5. Synthesis. In primeval forests of European beech, plant species
 richness did not differ significantly between the consecutive forest
 development stages, while species composition did. This is attributable to
 the smal-scale mosaic structure of the forest, rapid gap closure by beech,
 and the continuity of deadwood across the stages, which reduces
 spatio-temporal differences in microhabitat availability in the forest.
 Bryophytes and lichens are species-richer, and vascular plants at least
 similarly rich, in the primeval as compared to the production forests, if
 the study area is sufficiently large.
description: Data - Effects of Forest
 dynamics on species diversityData were collected
 between 2013 and 2015 in the western Carpathian Mountains, estern Slovakia
 in Fagus sylvatica primeval and production forests. The
 "Data"-file contains the following information: "CCA -
 Bryophytes/Lichens/Groundveg" contain the species tables
 (abbreviations in Appendix S4), "CCA - Bryophytes/Lichens/Groundveg -
 Stages" the calculated relative dominance of a stage on a sampling
 unit, which were used for the CCA analysis. "ISA -
 Bryophytes/Lichens" and "ISA - Bryophytes/Lichens
 -DBH"contain the data used for the indicator species analysis in
 order to detect a significant preference of epiphyte species to certain
 stem diameters (dbh) (living and dead standing trees). "ISA - Downed
 BL" and "ISA - Downed BL - DBH" contain the same
 information for epiphytes on downed deadwood. "Mean Species
 Number" provides the number of Plants, bryophytes and lichens in each
 forest development stage. "Downed deadwood - Mean species"
 provides the number of bryophytes and lichens in each forest development
 stage on downed deadwood. "RE - Curves -
 Bryophytes/Lichens/Plants" provide the data used for the
 rarefaction/extrapolation curves in order to compare the species richness
 between the three forest development stages and the production forest.
 "DBH - Species" and "DBH - Species - Production"
 contain the number of epiphytic bryophyte and lichen species in the
 primeval and production forest used for the GLM
 analysis.Data.xlsx