DOI: 10.5061/dryad.213gk3r
title: Data from: Biodiversity along temperate forest succession

description: 1. The successional dynamics of forests – from canopy openings to
 regeneration, maturation and decay – influences the amount and
 heterogeneity of resources available for forest-dwelling organisms.
 Conservation has largely focused only on selected stages of forest
 succession (e.g. late-seral stages). However, to develop comprehensive
 conservation strategies and to understand the impact of forest management
 on biodiversity, a quantitative understanding of how different trophic
 groups vary over the course of succession is needed. 2. We classified
 mixed mountain forests in Central Europe into nine successional stages
 using airborne LiDAR. We analysed α- and β-diversity of six trophic groups
 encompassing approximately 3,000 species from three kingdoms. We
 quantified the effect of successional stage on the number of species with
 and without controlling for species abundances and tested whether the data
 fit the more-individuals hypothesis or the habitat heterogeneity
 hypothesis. Furthermore, we analysed the similarity of assemblages along
 successional development. 3. The abundance of producers, first-order
 consumers and saprotrophic species showed a U-shaped response to forest
 succession. The number of species of producer and consumer groups
 generally followed this U-shaped pattern. In contrast to our expectation,
 the number of saprotrophic species did not change along succession. When
 we controlled for the effect of abundance, the number of producer and
 saproxylic beetle species increased linearly with forest succession,
 whereas the U-shaped response of the number of consumer species persisted.
 The analysis of assemblages indicated a large contribution of
 succession-mediated β-diversity to regional γ-diversity. 4. Synthesis and
 applications. Depending on the species group, our data supported both the
 more-individuals hypothesis and the habitat heterogeneity hypothesis. Our
 results highlight the strong influence of forest succession on
 biodiversity and underline the importance of controlling for successional
 dynamics when assessing biodiversity change in response to external
 drivers such as climate change. The successional stages with highest
 diversity (early and late successional stages) are currently strongly
 underrepresented in the forests of Central Europe. We thus recommend that
 conservation strategies aim at a more balanced representation of all
 successional stages.
description: Elevation a.s.l. and
 SoilElevation a.s.l. and the
 first PCA axis of soil parameter for each study plot.Environment.csvForest_Successional_StagesIn our study, plots were classified to successional stages by combining the decision trees of Zenner et al. (2016) and Tabaku (2000). These decision trees incorporate information on canopy projection area (CPA), maximum diameter at breast height (MaxD), proportion of dead wood (DeadwoodShare), normalized quartile of the DBH (NQD), and the cover (RegenerationArea, TreeLayer2Area) and height (TreeLayer2Height) of the regeneration layer. The combined decision tree was used to identify nine successional stages on 287 plots, i.e., gap (1), regeneration (2), establishment (3), early-optimum (4), mid-optimum (5), late-optimum (6), plenter (7), terminal (8) and decay (9) stages.Number of species and abundancesThis file contains the number of species and abundances from 23 taxonomic lineages on each study plot. The species were group-specifically sampled in a standardized way and covered six trophic groups: producers (higher plants, lichen, mosses), consumers I (phytophagous and pollinating arthropods), consumers II (invertebrates feeding on animal tissue), consumers III (vertebrates feeding on animal tissue), saprotrophs sensu lato (species feeding on dead tissue), and the special case of saproxylic saprotrophs (species depending on dead wood during their life cycle). Overall, this distinction of the 23 lineages into trophic groups yielded 33 functional groups; data of each of these functional groups is available on 29–287 plots.Number_Of_Species.csvPresence_Absence_DataThis file contains presence/absence data of: Bees and wasps, Beetles, Birds, Cicadas, Dipterans, Fungi, Lichens, Mosses, Moths, Plants, Sawflies, Spiders and True bugs.