Effects of climate and land use on arthropod biodiversity in deadwood (BEClimWood-Bugs)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Sebastian Seibold
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 569058832

Deadwood is an important carbon and nutrient pool and habitat for around one third of all forest species. Forest management affects decomposition rates and biodiversity in deadwood by shaping microclimatic conditions in deadwood and structural characteristics in surrounding habitats. Moreover, climate change and particularly drought periods will likely affect processes and communities in deadwood since many species require certain wood moisture conditions. However, our understanding how climate change and particularly droughts affect ecosystem processes and biodiversity in deadwood remains limited since microclimatic conditions in deadwood are affected by various factors at different scales. BEClimWood-Bugs aims at contributing to a better understanding how forest land-use intensity and climate across scales interactively shape arthropod communities in deadwood. Specifically, we will use the experimental set-up of the new multi-site experiment BEClimWood to test three main questions: i) What are the interactive effects of soil contact and reduced precipitation on arthropod communities in deadwood and how are they differing between macroclimatic regions? ii) Are the interactive effects of soil contact and reduced precipitation on arthropod communities in deadwood differing between forests managed at different land-use intensity? iii) Are the interactive effects of soil contact, reduced precipitation and land-use intensity differing between arthropod taxa? We will sample arthropods from all deadwood logs of BEClimWood using stem-emergence traps and combine traditional taxonomic species identification for beetles with metabarcoding for other arthropod groups. This approach provides a comprehensive picture of arthropod biodiversity patterns and their drivers covering a wide range of previously neglected taxa. Moreover, we will quantify arthropod diversity along the series of Hill numbers to address potential differences between the responses of rare and abundant species. Our analyses will focus on the effects of the experimental factors of BEClimWood and we plan to collaborate with other projects to include also other potential drivers of arthropod communities, such as differences in decay stage or fungal communities. Our results will help to provide a better understanding how droughts affect arthropod biodiversity in deadwood and how these effects are mediated by local microclimate and regional macroclimate. They will also provide a better understanding how forest management modifies the effects of droughts on arthropod communities and, thus, allow for recommendations for forest management to buffer against negative effects of droughts. In addition, we would take over the coordination of the BEClimWood Experiment and lead tasks which are relevant for all projects working with this experiment, such as the de-/installation of rain-out shelters, microclimate monitoring and organization of joint-sampling campaigns for measuring wood decomposition rates

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories