High-resolution 3D forest structure explains ecomorphological trait variation in assemblages of saproxylic beetles

Climate, topography, and the 3D structure of forests are major drivers affecting local species communities. However, little is known about how the specific functional traits of saproxylic (wood-living) beetles, involved in the recycling of wood, might be affected by those environmental characteristics.
Here we combine ecological and morphological traits available for saproxylic beetles and airborne laser scanning (ALS) data in Bayesian trait-based joint species distribution models to study how traits drive the distributions of more than 230 species in temperate forests of Europe.
We found that elevation (as a proxy for temperature and precipitation) and the proportion of conifers played important roles in species occurrences while variables related to habitat heterogeneity and forest complexity were less relevant. Further, we showed that local communities were shaped by environmental variation primarily through their ecological traits whereas morphological traits were involved only marg..., See manuscript for methods details.

Species traits - from references cited in manuscript (Hagge et al., 2021; Köhler, 2000; Seibold et al., 2015)
Environmental variables - from multiple local and remote measurements
Species detections - presence/absence of species captured in window traps at each plot
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