development of secondary woodland in oak wood pastures reduces the richness of rare epiphytic lichens柞木牧场次生林地的发展减少了丰富的罕见的附生地衣.pdfVIP

Development of Secondary Woodland in Oak Wood Pastures Reduces the Richness of Rare Epiphytic Lichens 1 2 ¨ ´ 2 ¨ 1 Heidi Paltto *, Anna Nordberg , Bjorn Norden , Tord Snall 1 Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden, 2 Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden Abstract Wooded pastures with ancient trees were formerly abundant throughout Europe, but during the last century, grazing has largely been abandoned often resulting in dense forests. Ancient trees constitute habitat for many declining and threatened species, but the effects of secondary woodland on the biodiversity associated with these trees are largely unknown. We tested for difference in species richness, occurrence, and abundance of a set of nationally and regionally red-listed epiphytic lichens between ancient oaks located in secondary woodland and ancient oaks located in open conditions. We refined the test of the effect of secondary woodland by also including other explanatory variables. Species occurrence and abundance were modelled jointly using overdispersed zero-inflated Poisson models. The richness of the red-listed lichens on ancient oaks in secondary woodland was half of that compared with oaks growing in open conditions. The species-level analyses revealed that this was mainly the result of lower occupancy of two of the study species. The tree-level abundance of one species was also lower in secondary woodland. Potential explanations for this pattern are that the study lichens are adapted to desiccating conditions enhancing their population persistence by low competition or that open, windy