Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 19, Issue 2, Pages 163-170Publisher
WILEY-BLACKWELL
DOI: 10.1111/ele.12548
Keywords
Dead wood ecology; forest biodiversity; functional traits; phylogenetic diversity; salvage logging; saproxylic
Categories
Funding
- German Federal Environmental Foundation
- Urban Forest Conservation and Biology chair
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [386151]
- Bavarian Academy for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management (ANL)
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The species-energy hypothesis predicts that more productive areas support higher species richness. Conversely, when resources are reduced, species richness is reduced. Empirical tests of whether extinctions are predominantly caused by environmental constraints or competitive exclusion are lacking. We experimentally reduced dead wood to c.15% of the initial amount after a major windstorm and examined changes in assembly mechanisms by combining trait-based and evolutionary species dissimilarities of eight taxonomic groups, differing in their dependence on dead wood (saproxylic/non-saproxylic). Species richness and assembly mechanisms of non-saproxylic taxa remained largely unaffected by removal of dead wood. By contrast, extinctions of saproxylic species were caused by reversing the predominant assembly mechanisms (e.g. increasing importance of competitive exclusion for communities assembled through environmental filtering or vice versa). We found no evidence for an intensification of the predominant assembly mechanism (e.g. competitive exclusion becoming stronger in a competitively structured community).
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