0000000000164609
AUTHOR
Michał ŻMihorski
Post-fire beetle succession in a biodiversity hotspot: Białowieża Primeval Forest
Abstract Fires can heavily impact forest ecosystems but fire consequences for animal communities at burned and control sites are rarely investigated in natural forests. Here we present a 10-year study of post-fire beetle succession in natural ecosystem of Bialowieza Primeval Forest, Poland, being a hotspot for beetle fauna. We sampled beetles at burned and unburned (control) sites and compared local alpha and regional gamma diversity between treatments and over time. In total, 27,958 individuals belonging to 630 beetle species were recorded. Average species richness (alpha diversity) and density per sample was higher in burned forest than in control sites, and this difference was especially…
The last meal: large insects predominate the diet of the European Roller Coracias garrulus prior to population extinction
Capsule: The diet of a European Roller Coracias garrulus population, approximately 10 years before its extinction, comprised of large-bodied orthopterans and coleopterans. Aims: To explore the diet composition of declining population of the European Roller. Methods: In 2005, 2006 and 2009, we monitored 18 nesting sites of the European Roller in southern Poland. Pellets and prey remain found in nest-holes were analysed. Results: In total, 1646 prey items were found. Orthoptera (60.4% of prey items) and Coleoptera (38.5%) predominated while vertebrates were caught rarely. Large-bodied species (orthopterans, bush-crickets, beetles Prionus coriarius and Cetonia aurata) including ground-dwellers…
Improving scientific rigour in conservation evaluations and a plea deal for transparency on potential biases
Abstract The delivery of rigorous and unbiased evidence on the effects of interventions lay at the heart of the scientific method. Here we examine scientific papers evaluating agri‐environment schemes, the principal instrument to mitigate farmland biodiversity declines worldwide. Despite previous warnings about rudimentary study designs in this field, we found that the majority of studies published between 2008 and 2017 still lack robust study designs to strictly evaluate intervention effects. Potential sources of bias that arise from the correlative nature are rarely mentioned, and results are still promoted by using a causal language. This lack of robust study designs likely results from …