PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #67: Conservation Ecology.
Friday, August 9. Presentation from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

Environmental constraints on ground dwelling beetle assemblages in old-growth and managed forests.

Latty, Erika^*,1, Werner, Shahla², Mladenoff, David¹, Raffa, Kenneth², ¹ University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI² University fo Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI

ABSTRACT- Ground dwelling beetle assemblages were compared in Great Lakes northern hardwood forests with 3 replicated management histories, old-growth, uneven-aged, and even-aged forests, to determine if beetle community composition was linked to previous forest management practices. Using pitfall traps, beetles were sampled during a two-year period. Few beetle species were exclusive to a given management category. Compositional differences between the 3 management categories were assessed using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS) ordination. The ordination revealed distinct differences in beetle community assemblages between forest types. To determine which habitat characters were most relevant to beetle distributions we overlaid a suite of environmental variables on the ordination. Coarse woody debris and snag volume, gap area, understory vegetation, and forest floor depth were all significantly correlated with the ordination axes suggesting that these variables are critical in structuring the beetle communities. Those species most strongly associated with old-growth forests, for example Carabus sylvosus, were also species identified as preferring forest habitat whereas species associated with the managed forests are known to favor open habitats, like Carabus nemoralis. These results indicate that forest management practices influence beetle community assemblages even when overall species richness and/or evenness is seemingly unaltered. Findings from this study also suggest that the indicator species concept may not be as relevant for beetle communities as is the diversity of species that are associated with select environments such as open versus forested habitats.

KEY WORDS: hardwood forest, forest management, carabidae, nonmetric multidimensional scaling