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Distribution of ground-dwelling beetle assemblages (Coleoptera) across ecotones between natural oak forests and mature pine plantations in North China

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Abstract

This paper studied edge effects resulting from logging to reforestation on the distribution of ground-dwelling beetles (Coleoptera) across ecotones between natural oak forests and mature pine plantations established after harvesting of natural forests. Using pitfall traps, ground-dwelling beetles were investigated at three replicated plots (ecotones) with three sampling positions of slope (lower, middle and upper) for each plot. Rarefaction estimates of species richness indicated that traps on natural forests and transition zones had more species than mature plantations did, and traps on the middle slope had more species than on the lower and upper slopes did. Results of an ANOVA analysis, which used forest type and slope position as factors and number of species and individuals as the response variables, showed a significant effect of forest type and slope position, and a significant interaction between forest type and slope position. Multivariate analyses (DCA and CCA) showed that beetles of transition zones were more similar to those of natural forests than to those of mature plantations, and that some environmental characteristics, i.e., proportion of broad-leaved trees, canopy cover and elevation (slope position), significantly affected species abundances. We conclude that the logging of natural oak forests and the reforestation of pine plantations can result in subtle variation in the composition and distribution of beetle assemblages at a local scale and such variation should be taken into account when conservation issues are involved.

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Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Dr. Hong-Bin Liang (Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), who assisted us with species identification. We also thank Dr. Ke-Ping Ma, Xian-Ming Gao, Wei Wang, Qing-Kang Li and Ms. Wen-Jie Yan from Institute of Botany, CAS, for helping with the field studies. We are grateful to Dr. Tim Shreeve (School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University) and two anonymous referees who made helpful comments on the earlier versions of the manuscript. This study was supported in part by CAS Innovation Program (KSCX2-YW-Z-0910), National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program-2007CB411605), The National Key Technology R&D Program (2008BAC39B02), programs of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC-30700074), and a grant from the Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution of CAS (No. O529YX5105).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District, 100101, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Xiao-Dong Yu, Tian-Hong Luo & Hong-Zhang Zhou

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  1. Xiao-Dong Yu
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  2. Tian-Hong Luo
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  3. Hong-Zhang Zhou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hong-Zhang Zhou.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

See Table 4.

Table 4 Beetle species captured on Dongling Mountain, Beijing, North China, with forest type and position
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Yu, XD., Luo, TH. & Zhou, HZ. Distribution of ground-dwelling beetle assemblages (Coleoptera) across ecotones between natural oak forests and mature pine plantations in North China. J Insect Conserv 14, 617–626 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-010-9290-6

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