Higher bat and bird γ-diversity in structurally complex forests is driven by distinct α- and β-diversity responses

作者：Clara Wild, Anne Chao, Po-Yen Chuang, Marc W. Cadotte, Nico Daume, Orsi Decker, Ronja Hausmann, Sophia Hochrein, Michael Junginger, Mareike Kortmann, Sonja Kümmet, Soumen Mallick, Oliver Mitesser, Ruth Pickert, Julia Rothacher, Kai Sattler, Jens Schlüter, Simon Thorn, Jörg Müller · 发表于：bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1101/2025.08.25.671712 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Bat Biology and Ecology Studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Summary Effective conservation management and habitat restoration rely on understanding how biodiversity responds to environmental change. Centuries of silviculture have homogenized forests and their species communities globally, reducing biodiversity. To test whether restoring forest structural complexity can promote biodiversity, we conducted a large-scale, spatially explicit landscape experiment. At 11 sites across Germany, we compared bat and bird diversity in forests with experimentally enhanced heterogeneity by increasing deadwood and canopy complexity to homogeneous production forests. Both taxa were investigated by autonomous acoustic recorders and automatic species identification. We quantified within-patch (α-), between-patch (β-), and landscape-level (γ-) diversity, emphasizing infrequent to highly frequent species for taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity. The pairwise comparisons of the sites were synthesized using a newly developed meta-analysis of rarefaction-extrapolation curves. γ-diversity increased significantly in structurally heterogeneous forests for both taxa, albeit through distinct taxon-specific mechanisms. Bat γ-diversity gains were primarily driven by higher β-diversity, indicating greater dissimilarity in species assemblages among patches, while bird γ-diversity increased via higher α-diversity within patches. Bat diversity increases were mainly taxonomic, suggesting functional similarity in the communities, whereas birds showed the hi...