Abundance of pest and benign Cerambycidae both increase with decreasing forest productivity

Abstract

The sustainable use of forest resources requires an understanding of the influence of site conditions and forest health on both pest species and those species providing ecosystem services such as pollination and decomposition. The beetle family Cerambycidae is diverse and contains both pest and nonpest species, with many species performing such ecosystem services. We predicted that as hardwood tree productivity decreased, the proportion of pest Cerambycidae present would increase at a site. We used site index as a measure of hardwood tree productivity. The proportion of species that were pests did not change with productivity because the abundance of both pest and nonpest species increased with declining productivity. The findings of the present study have implications for both managing pest species and conserving the biodiversity of nonpest species.