Effects of selection cutting on the abundance and fertility of indicator lichens <i>Lobaria pulmonaria</i> and <i>Lobaria quercizans</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary Although selection cutting is probably less harmful to forest ecosystems than clear cutting, its effects on biodiversity remain largely unexplored. We investigated the previously unstudied effects of selection cutting on the abundance and fertility of two dominating species of epiphytic lichens, Lobaria pulmonaria and Lobaria quercizans , in a northern hardwood forest of New Brunswick, Canada. Twenty‐eight forest stands were selected representing two contrasting silvicultural treatments: fairly recent selection cuts (5–9 years) and ‘uncut’ stands that had been subjected to low‐intensity single‐tree cutting at least 35 years ago. Within each stand, we quantified the abundance and fertility of lichens on 36 trees together with selected forest stand variables. Although both species had survived harvesting, the abundance of L. quercizans and L. pulmonaria was four and five times higher, respectively, in uncut stands than in selection cuts. The most important predictive factors for lichen abundance at the stand level were total basal area and canopy closure, which were much lower in selection cuts. Furthermore, the abundance of both species at the tree level was significantly correlated with tree size. Most interestingly, fertile L. quercizans and L. pulmonaria were, respectively, five and 26 times more frequent in uncut stands. In addition, for L. pulmonaria the fertility frequency was only 3% in selection cuts, compared with 37% in uncut stands. The fertility of both lichen species was strongly correlated with their abundance at the tree level. Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that selection cutting has a strong impact on the abundance and fertility of these two Lobaria species, and that studies ignoring fertility may underestimate the negative effects of forestry on lichens. To reduce the negative effects we have three recommendations. (i) Large trees from old seral stages should be retained during selection cuts. (ii) The cutting cycle should be extended and the basal area removed should be reduced. These actions would improve the microclimate, increase the amount of suitable habitat and prolong the time window for lichen colonization in selection cuts. (iii) Some mature deciduous forest stands should be protected at the regional scale. This would promote the long‐term persistence of large, sexually reproductive lichen populations and concurrently benefit all species tightly linked with mature hardwood forests.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".