The effect of vertical stratification and forest management on beetle (Insecta: Coleopters) and spider (Arachnida: Araneae) communities in a temperate forest
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Forest canopies may harbour up to 50% of the world's diversity and since the canopy and forest floor have different architectures, the structure of arthropod assemblages may vary by stratum. This has implications for forest management since long-term logging practices can change the composition and structure of northeastern North American forests, and arthropods are sensitive to these differences. While canopy sampling is becoming more common, the interaction between forest management and vertical stratification in temperate forests in North America has remained relatively unexplored. The objective of this thesis is to explore and quantify the structure of arthropod communities in two strata within the context of forest management (time-since harvest and silvicultural technique). I used beetles (Coleoptera) and spiders (Araneae), important components of forest ecosystems, to test effects of vertical stratification and forest management effects on biodiversity and community structure. I collected 586 species of beetles and spiders, representing 11 137 individuals, over two field seasons in a deciduous hardwood forest in Southern Québec. Beetle diversity was influenced by height, with the understorey harbouring a higher abundance and species richness than the upper canopy. Spider diversity was not affected by height or forest management. Both beetle and spider community compositions were strongly affected by height, with each stratum supporting a different community. Beetle assemblages differed between forest management sites (both time-since harvest and silvicultural technique treatments), but this was largely influenced by the Latridiidae, the most commonly collected family. Spider assemblages did not change with forest management treatment. Responses were taxon dependent, at both the Order and Family level. I suggest that ongoing biodiversity assessments and future ecological work in temperate forests should include canopy sampling, as omitting it might lead to an inaccurate representation of forest systems. Forest management should also be limited in frequency (time-since harvest) and intensity (silvicultural techniques), since canopy closure seems to be an important factor in shaping arthropod communities.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".