Although the functional trait approach can facilitate the understanding of mechanisms
that underline community responses to habitat alteration, only a few studies used
this way on exploring the structure of insect assemblages compared to taxon‐based
analyses. We compared the descriptive power of medium‐term effects (2014–2018) of
forestry treatments in a temperate managed oak‐dominated forest on taxon‐ vs. trait‐based
descriptors of ground beetle assemblages. The treatments included rotation forestry
(partial preparation cutting, clear‐cutting, retention‐tree group, and mature closed
forest as control) and continuous cover forestry (gap cutting) operations. The species
composition was only slightly influenced by the treatments; on the ordination biplot,
the control, retention tree group, and clear‐cutting treatments formed relatively
homogeneous groups, well separated from each other, while the others were scattered
randomly in the ordination space. Over time, the species richness decreased in all
treatments, but it was higher in the retention tree group treatment than in others
in 2016 and 2017. The activity density also declined between years, but an immediate
mass effect was revealed after the implementation of treatment types especially in
the control, gap, and preparation cuts. We found that assemblages in the clear‐cutting
and retention‐tree group had similar characteristics: high functional diversity; more
open‐habitat, generalist, and omnivore species and fewer carnivore species; while
those in the control, gap, and preparation cutting groups had the opposite: lower
functional diversity, more forest species, and more carnivorous species. Our findings
will demonstrate that the simultaneous use of the two approaches will allow the most
articulate understanding of the status of ground beetles assemblages in managed forests.
