Nicolas Roth

Bern University of Applied Sciences | BFH · Department of Agriculture Forestry, Food Science & Management

Forest ecosystems are facing increasing challenges like natural disturbances. Despite positive disturbance impacts on the diversity of several taxonomic groups, there are still concerns, whether the drastic canopy opening can lead to a turnover from forest to open habitat species. We sampled arthropods along a disturbance gradient in Norway spruce...

Tree-related microhabitats (TreMs) provide a quantitative indicator of habitat heterogeneity in forests, including beech (Fagus) forests. However, systematic analyses of the factors driving TreM diversity and composition in Fagus sylvatica and F. orientalis forests are lacking. In this study, the TreMs of beech forests on 203 plots of 22 forest sit...

The European biodiversity and forest strategies rely on forest sustainable management (SFM) to conserve forest biodiversity. However, current sustainability assessments hardly account for direct biodiversity indicators. We focused on forest multi-taxon biodiversity to: i) gather and map the existing information; ii) identify knowledge and research...

Outbreaks of the spongy moth Lymantria dispar can have devastating impacts on forest resources and ecosystems. Lepidoptera‐specific insecticides, such as Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki (BTK) and tebufenozide, are often deployed to prevent heavy defoliation of the forest canopy. While it has been suggested that using BTK poses less risk to non...

Insecticides used to combat outbreaks of forest defoliators can adversely affect non‐target arthropods. Forestry insecticides typically suppress Lepidoptera larvae which are the cornerstone of the canopy community of deciduous oak forests. The abrupt removal of this dominant component of the food web could have far‐reaching implications for forest...

Natural disturbances are increasing around the globe, also impacting protected areas. Although previous studies have indicated that natural disturbances result in mainly positive effects on biodiversity, these analyses mostly focused on a few well established taxonomic groups, and thus uncertainty remains regarding the comprehensive impact of natur...

Deux projets distincts d'inventaire de Coléoptères saproxyliques ont permis la découverte d'Aesalus scarabaeoides en Suisse en 2019 et ainsi confirmé sa présence, documentée jusqu'alors par une seule donnée datant de près de 50 ans. Der Kurzschröter Aesalus scarabaeoides wurde 2019 anlässlich zweier Monitoringprojekte für Totholzkäfer in der Schwe...

Previous macroecological studies have suggested that larger and darker insects are favored in cold environments and that the importance of body size and color for the absorption of solar radiation is not limited to diurnal insects. However, whether these effects hold true for local communities and are consistent across taxonomic groups and sampling...

The high diversity of insects has limited the volume of long‐term community data with a high taxonomic resolution and considerable geographic replications, especially in forests. Therefore, trends and causes of changes are poorly understood. Here we analyse trends in species richness, abundance and biomass of nocturnal macro moths in three quantita...

Protected areas worldwide are important to maintaining biodiversity and providing recreational opportunities to society. However, many protected areas are affected by unprecedented, large and severe natural disturbances, like bark beetle outbreaks. Due to the contrasting responses of different taxonomic groups to disturbance events and largely nega...

Aim Despite increasing interest in β-diversity, i.e. the spatial and temporal turnover of species, the mechanisms underlying species turnover at different spatial scales are not fully understood, although they likely differ among different functional groups. We investigated the relative importance of dispersal limitations and the environmental filt...

1. Lentic freshwater organisms are influenced by a multitude of factors, including geomorphology, hydrology, anthropogenic impacts and climate change. Organisms that depend on patchy resources such as water beetles may also be sensitive to anthropogenic habitat degradation, like pollution, eutrophication, water level or management alteration. 2. T...

Flower color serves as a major attractant for entomophilic plant visitors. In the Mediterranean region, a group of unrelated plant species share an unusual deep-red flower color without UV reflection and are pollinated by glaphyrid beetles. Some of these species, referred to as “poppy guild”, possess different color morphs, but the mechanisms maint...

Aim European temperate forests have lost dead wood and the associated biodiversity owing to intensive management over centuries. Nowadays, some of these forests are being restored by enrichment with dead wood, but mostly only at stand scales. Here, we investigated effects of a seminal dead‐wood enrichment strategy on saproxylic organisms at the lan...

In Central European temperate forests, the host tree identity is one factor that determines the diversity of saproxylic organisms. These forests have been affected by humans for millennia, in contrast to the Hyrcanian forests south of the Caspian Sea, with their numerous old-growth features and endemic species. How the tree host species in this tem...