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DOI

  • Jan Christoph Axmacher
    University College London
  • Weiguo Sang
  • Ewan Brennan
    University College London
  • Maryse Diekman
    University College London
  • Yunhui Liu
    China Agricultural University, Beijing
  • Alice Marples
    University College London
  • Hongliang Shi
    Beijing Forestry University
  • Zhongzhou Sui
    University College London
  • Xiaojie Sun
    Minzu University of China
  • Eleanor Warren-Thomas
  • Xin Yang
    Minzu University of China
  • Zhenrong Yu
    China Agricultural University, Beijing
  • Fan Bai
    Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
  • Liangtao Li
    China Agricultural University, Beijing
  • Changliu Wang
    China Agricultural University, Beijing
  • Xin Wang
    Peking University
  • Yi Zou
    University College London
Following the historic destruction of China’s forests, large protected forest landscapes have been reestablishment across the country in recent decades. Currently, the species assemblages inhabiting these landscapes remain widely unknown. Here, we aim to establish whether the new temperate forest landscapes in Eastern China, composed of plantation, secondary and remnant mature forest patches, are dominated by widely distributed habitat generalists, widely distributed habitat specialists, or by sets of highly localized forest habitat specialist species, using vascular plants and ground beetles as case studies. We sampled plants and ground beetles on 159 plots representing different forest types distributed across ten study regions. The Chord-normalized expected species shared (CNESS) dissimilarity for beetles and Jaccard dissimilarity for plants were calculated to establish species’ turnover patterns, while we used structural equation and multiple regression models for dissimilarity matrices to establish the relative importance of location, elevation and biotic interactions in explaining large-scale distribution patterns of species assemblages. Both taxa showed highly regionalized recruitment, with plant communities responding strongly to latitude, and to geographic location in general, while the composition of ground beetle communities appeared strongly governed by both the composition of the vegetation and study plot location. Both assemblages showed a distinct lack of widespread habitat generalists. Our results demonstrate for the first time that local assemblages of forest specialist species appear to have survived last century’s deforestation in unknown refugia before successfully re-colonizing China’s restored forest ecosystems. We argue that restored forest landscapes can play a significant role in the conservation of temperate China’s biodiversity at both local and regional scales.
Original languageEnglish
JournalForest Ecology and Management
Volume549
Early online date11 Oct 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2023
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