Insects reared out from logging residues on clear cuts in southern Sweden

Growing interest in harvesting logging residues for energy production will reduce the amount of fine (small-diameter) wood. This could pose a threat to saproxylic (dead-wood living) organisms. Therefore, we asked firstly if logging residues have a beetle fauna of conservation interest, and secondly which differences there are between different categories of logging residues. Samples of logging-residue wood of aspen, birch, oak and spruce, divided into three diameter classes ranging between 1 and 15 cm were collected from 60 clear cuts in southern Sweden. The clear cuts were positioned in six different regions, where in each region we had one landscape which is considered a hotspot for saproxylic diversity and one landscape was an ordinary. Within each landscape one clear cut was Yonng (=one year old) and another Old (4-5 years old). Saproxylic beetles were then reared out from the samples. In total, we found 50,566 saproxylic beetles representing 160 species.