Plant-Dwelling Spider Assemblages in Managed and Protected Primeval Deciduous Stands of Białowieża Forest, Poland
2025
Marzena Stańska | Tomasz Stański | Barbara Patoleta
The Biał:owież:a Forest is home to both primary forests under strict protection and commercial forests, which provides an opportunity to compare them in terms of the number of individuals, number of species, and composition of different animal assemblages. The main goal of our study was to compare spider assemblages inhabiting herbaceous vegetation in these two types of forest stands. Spiders were sampled using a sweep net in an oak&ndash:lime&ndash:hornbeam forest, an ash&ndash:alder forest, and an alder carr. More spiders were found in unmanaged stands compared to managed stands, but a significant difference was found only in the alder carr. Total species richness did not significantly vary between managed and unmanaged stands in all forest types. In the oak&ndash:lime&ndash:hornbeam forest, more species per sample were found in commercial stands compared to primeval stands, while the result was the opposite for the alder carr. Our research did not show a clear negative impact of forest management on plant-dwelling spiders. The impact of forest management was evident in the case of the riparian forest, where the managed stand was characterized by low canopy cover as a result of logging carried out years ago, which is likely to have resulted in differences in family composition.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute