Retention forestry can maintain epiphytic lichens on living pine trees, but provides impoverished habitat for deadwood-associated lichens

Managing forests for timber yields reduces the amounts of old trees and deadwood, which has profound effects on species that are dependent on them. Retention forestry, where some trees are permanently left unharvested on clearcut sites, may enable the formation of deadwood and old trees in managed forests, but it is unresolved how well these practices facilitate the occurrence of species in managed forests, especially in the long term. We studied the capacity of tree retention practices to support the diversity of epiphytic lichens, a key group among threatened forest species. We compared lichen assemblages on retained trees in harvested sites to those on trees in unharvested control sites. The data was collected 21 years post-harvest and included living trees, snags (standing dead trees), and logs (fallen trees) of Pinus sylvestris (Scots pine).
Living trees, snags, and logs each hosted distinct lichen communities. The highest lichen diversity was found on snags. On living trees, speci..., , , # Retention forestry can maintain epiphytic lichens on living pine trees, but provides impoverished habitat for deadwood-associated lichens

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83v0](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83v0)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data was collected in the context of a field experiment, where overmature pine-dominated (*Pinus sylvestris*) forests in boreal Finland were harvested with different treatments. The three treatments included in this data set are: Unharvested (i.e. control), 50H (harvested with 50 m3/ha of retained trees), 10H (harvested with 10 m3/ha of retained trees). The data consists of presence-absence lichen community data surveyed on 396 that include living trees, standing dead trees (snags), and fallen dead trees (logs). These also include 30 kelo trees, i.e. a special type of standing dead tree with exceptional longevity, that were located in or in the vicinity of the control sites. All surveyed trees were Scots pines (*Pin...