Abstract
The conservation of traditional fruit orchards might be considered to be a fashion, and many people might find it difficult to accept that these artificial habitats can be significant for overall biodiversity. The main aim of this study was to identify possible roles of traditional fruit orchards for dead wood-dependent (saproxylic) beetles. The study was performed in the Central European landscape in the Czech Republic, which was historically covered by lowland sparse deciduous woodlands. Window traps were used to catch saproxylic beetles in 25 traditional fruit orchards. The species richness, as one of the best indicators of biodiversity, was positively driven by very high canopy openness and the rising proportion of deciduous woodlands in the matrix of the surrounding landscape. Due to the disappearance of natural and semi-natural habitats (i.e., sparse deciduous woodlands) of saproxylic beetles, orchards might complement the functions of suitable habitat fragments as the last biotic islands in the matrix of the cultural Central European landscape.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Andrea Podávková for helping with spatial analyses, Dušan Romportl for helping with spatial analyses and the creation of map, and Štěpán Vodka for the analyses on canopy openness. I would also like to thank Jörg Müller and Keith N. A. Alexander for their discussions, Lenore Fahrig for literature, Donna J. Rowan for improving the English, and three anonymous referees who provided the constructive comments. The paper was partly supported by the project CIGA No. 20144302 (Czech University of Life Sciences Prague).
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Communicated by: Sven Thatje
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Horak, J. Fragmented habitats of traditional fruit orchards are important for dead wood-dependent beetles associated with open canopy deciduous woodlands. Naturwissenschaften 101, 499–504 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1179-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1179-x