Abstract
Forest edges are formed by natural or anthropogenic processes and their maintaining processes cause fundamentally different edge responses. We evaluated the published evidence on the effect of various edges on the abundance of ground beetles of different habitat affinity and dispersal power. Our results, based on 23 publications and 86 species, showed that natural forest edges were impenetrable for open-habitat species with high dispersal power, preventing their influx into the forest interiors, while forest specialist species of limited dispersal power penetrated and reached abundances comparable to those in forest interiors. Anthropogenic edges, maintained by continued disturbance were permeable by macropterous open-habitat species, allowing them to invade the forest interiors, while such edges (except the forestry-induced ones) deterred brachypterous forest specialists. Different permeability of forest edges with various maintaining processes can affect ecosystem functions and services, therefore the preservation and restoration of natural forest edges are key issues in both forest ecology and nature conservation.
Highlights
With the ongoing, world-wide habitat conversion, previously continuous habitats become fragmented, and the presence of edges becomes more and more prevalent in landscapes [1]
At edges maintained natural processes, abundance of flying grasslandersof flying grasslanders was higher than those in the respective forest interiors, while no similar was higher than those in the respective forest interiors, while no similar pattern occurred in pattern edges occurred inby edges maintained by human influence
Ground beetle species richness was significantly higher in forest edges maintained by natural processes than the forest interiors, while there was no similar difference between edges with continued human influences and their respective forest interiors [11]
Summary
World-wide habitat conversion, previously continuous habitats become fragmented, and the presence of edges becomes more and more prevalent in landscapes [1]. The boundary zone between adjacent habitats often display attributes that are distinct from either its adjacent habitat [3,4]. These special conditions create habitat for edge-inhabiting species with highly dynamic abundance and flow-on changes in their biotic interactions from predation to seed dispersal at these edges [3]. Four fundamental phenomena were identified to account for changes in species abundance across habitat edges: ecological flows, access to spatially separated resources, resource tracking and species interactions [5]. A predictive model, driven by resource distribution, aimed to forecast changes in abundance near edges for any species in any landscape [6].
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