Anthropogenic Disturbances Shape Soil Capillary and Saturated Water Retention Indirectly via Plant Functional Traits and Soil Organic Carbon in Temperate Forests

Soil’s water-physical properties support essential soil water retention functions for driving water distribution and availability, which is vital for plant growth and biogeochemical cycling. However, the question concerning how tree compositions and their interactions with other abiotic factors modulate soil’s water-physical properties in disturbed forests remains poorly understood. Based on observational data from nine permanent forest sites (18,747 trees and 210 plots) in the northeast of China, where forests once undergone three different levels of anthropogenic logging disturbance, we evaluated how multiple biotic (i.e., tree diversity and functional trait composition) and abiotic (soil texture and soil organic carbon) factors influence water-physical properties (i.e., in terms of soil capillary water retention (WC) and soil saturated water retention (WS)) in temperate forests. We found that the impacts of logging disturbance on soil water-physical properties were associated with improved tree diversity, acquisitive functional traits, and SOC. These associated attributes were also positively related to WC and WS, while there was no significant effect from soil texture. Moreover, disturbance indirectly affected soil water-physical properties mainly by functional traits and SOC, as acquisitive functional traits significantly mediate the effect from disturbance on WC and SOC mediates the influence from disturbance on WS. Finally, our results emphasize the potential relationships of tree composition with SOC and soil water retention as compared with soil texture and hence suggest that plants can actively modulate their abiotic contexts after disturbance, which is meaningful for understanding forest health and resistance.

Review of the state of populations of Neottianthe cucullata (L.) Schlechter in various regions of the Russian Federation

Many members of the Orhidaceae family are rare plants. One of the effective ways to preserve these speciesis to include them in the Red Book and give them a certain status of rarity. Neottianthe cucullata has a wide species rangein the Russian Federation. This species is found in almost all regions located in the temperate zone. Neottianthe cucullatais included in the Red Book of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, is protected in 48 regions of Russia. The speciesgrows mainly in coniferous and mixed forests, so the main threat to it is the increasing rate of logging. Disturbance of soilcover and changes in environmental conditions are limiting factors. However, the analysis showed that the state of populations in different regions is very different. In the European part, where the pressure on forest resources is very high,Neottianthe cucullata has a status ranging from «probably extinct» to «very rare». In some cases, reliable information is notavailable. On the territory of Siberia, the species belongs to category 3 – rare. On the territory of the Republic of Buryatia, it belongs to category 7 – out of danger. Most often, the populations of Neottianthe cucullata are well studied and protected in nature reserves and sanctuaries. In a number of regions, there is no information on the state of local populations.

Selective logging shows no impact on the dietary breadth of the fawn leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros cervinus)

Logging activities degrade forest habitats across large areas of the tropics, but the impacts on trophic interactions that underpin forest ecosystems are poorly understood. DNA metabarcoding provides an invaluable tool to investigate such interactions, allowing analysis at a far greater scale and resolution than has previously been possible. We analysed the diet of the insectivorous fawn leaf-nosed bat Hipposideros cervinus across a forest disturbance gradient in Borneo, using a dataset of ecological interactions from an unprecedented number of bat-derived faecal samples. Bats predominantly consumed insects from the orders Lepidoptera, Blattodea, Diptera and Coleoptera, and the taxonomic composition of their diet remained relatively consistent across sites regardless of logging disturbance. There was little difference in the richness of prey consumed in each logging treatment, indicating potential resilience of this species to habitat degradation. In fact, bats consumed a high richness of prey items, and intensive sampling is needed to reliably compare feeding ecology over multiple sites regardless of the bioinformatic procedures used.

Abundance and genetic diversity responses of a lizard (Eulamprus heatwolei) to logging disturbance

Rotational logging practices are used with the goal of reducing forest disturbance impacts on biodiversity. However, it is poorly understood whether such forest management practices conserve the demographic and genetic composition of animal populations across logged landscapes. Here we investigated whether rotational logging practices alter patterns of landscape-scale population abundance and genetic diversity of a forest-dwelling lizard (Eulamprus heatwolei) in south-eastern Australia. We sampled lizards (n = 407) at up to 48 sites across a chronosequence of logging disturbance intervals (<10 to >60 years after logging) to assess site-specific population changes and genetic diversity parameters. Lizard abundances exhibited a significant curvilinear response to time since logging, with decreased numbers following logging (<10 years), increased abundance as the forest regenerated (10–20 years), before decreasing again in older regenerated forest sites (>30 years). Lizard genetic diversity parameters were not significantly influenced by logging disturbance. These results suggest that logging practices, whilst inducing short-term changes to population abundance, had no measurable effects on the landscape-scale genetic diversity of E. heatwolei. These results are important as they demonstrate the value of monitoring for evaluating forest management efficacy, and the use of different population-level markers to make stronger inference about the potential impacts of logging activities.