Drivers of forest β-diversity in different organisms and its relevance for conservation

Land-use intensity has been shown to not only affect local alpha-diversity, but also beta-diversity, i.e. the turnover of species among sites, resulting in a homogenization of communities at landscape scale [1]. Thus, for the conservation of forest biodiversity at larger spatial scales beta-diversity needs to be considered. However, the drivers of forest beta-diversity and its underlying processes in different taxonomic and functional groups are yet not well understood. We studied the drivers of beta-diversity in 15 organism groups from bacteria to vertebrates across 150 forest sites (unmanaged and managed beech, managed conifer) in three region of Germany, including environmental drivers (…