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Abstract

Land use intensification in forests is a main driver of global biodiversity loss. Although historical state of land use differs between subtropical and temperate zones, gradients of land-use intensities similarly range from unmanaged to very intensively managed forests. Irrespective of similar land use forces in both climate zones, comparative studies on land use effects are still rare. Such studies are, however, promising in discovering more general impacts and geographical specifics of land use intensification. We studied litter-dwelling invertebrates along a gradient of increasing land use intensity in subtropical forests in Southern Brazil and temperate forests in Central Europe using similar sampling designs. Effects of land use intensity on the entire community were analyzed on the level of orders and feeding guilds. In both climate zones a similar number of individuals were caught when standardizes to 100 pitfall trap days, but taxa richness was higher in the subtropics. Moreover, community composition differed between both climate zones. In both regions, land use intensity did not affect taxa richness, but invertebrate abundance was affected in opposite ways; while increasing land use intensity resulted in a decrease of invertebrate abundance in the subtropics, an increase was observed in the temperate zone and this was mostly consistent regarding different feeding guilds. Management practices should take into account that the effect of land use intensity on biodiversity can differ drastically among climatic regions.