INTRO: Natural disturbances are natural and happening although commercial forestry has minimized it as well as they could. This has led to situation where forest structure, fauna and flora will experience bigger and more unexpected changes than forest managers are used to when these disturbances happen. One of the targets in disturbance conversation are bark beetles. They are seen as pests and a threat in commercial forests but in old growth natural forests it is part of the original fauna and plays important role in the circle of forest life.
Because natural disturbances cannot be avoided in commercial forests it is beneficial to study and show evidence what kind of positive impacts these phenomena, and in this case bark beetle infestations, have and could deliver for forests, forest biodiversity, forest sustainability and species conservation in general.
MERITS: This study has lot of merits.
Firstly, authors used two different animal classes: birds and mammals which give reader more perspective than using just one species or class. Even they have chosen only flying animals these species forage differently (1 insectivore that pray flying insects and two omnivores that forage in forest floor level) and their environmental requirements are different.
Secondly, I like the versatility of datas. With bats, I specially liked that the data was collected with 3 different methodologies and with Capercaillie and Hazel grouse I like the idea of historical investication and seeing today as a result of what happened in past and using LiDAR datas for this kind of useful knowledge increase.
CRITIQUE: I don't have any real criticism. But I raise up two thing I was left to wonder.
Firstly even the study seem excellent I hoped for more different species to be investigated and by that I mean for example insects, non-flying mammals etc. But in reality I have to assume that because the chosen species are not specialized to any particular pray or grazing species there are some common food resources still available even the disturbance might have had a huge impact on forest in general. Therefore it is adequate to use these 3 species.
Secondly I didn't get what kind of species spesific (presence, modelled, generalizied..?) data you had about Capercaillie and Hazel grouse. Maybe you just forgot to mention that.
DISCUSSION: This study is really welcome and as it is well planned and carefully put into practice these results can really help in the interaction between forest management and forest conservation. This kind of work that combines conservation science and ecology with old and new technologies, different end user motivations and interest groups is useful and is playing big role in future to come. And when it comes to bioresources, sich as commercially managed forests, that contain different monetary / ecosystem service values, it's even more important that research gives useful and forward-looking information such as this probably will be.
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INTRO: The manuscript by Kortmann and Thorn, entitled "Restoring forests by bark beetle outbreaks - implication from mountain forest flagship species" explores the impact of bark beetle infestations on biodiversity from the perspective of a few flagship species. The study explores the linkages between patterns (forest structure) and processes (biodiversity) in an European mountain forest, and deals with the essential question relating to habitat restoration in these landscapes.
MERITS: From biodiversity perspective, the questions relating to forest management are essential. The study offers interesting insights into how forest dynamics can be used for species conservation and explores the potential of post-disturbance biological legacies for maintaining and restoring biodiversity. These themes are of broad interest, as intensive forest management has strongly altered forest structure and affected biodiversity especially in boreal and temperate biomes.
The study combines data from various sources. The utilization of LiDAR data together with historical aerial photography in conservation context is definitely an interesting aspect of which I would like to hear more!
CRITIQUE: I was wondering about the history of the studied forest area. If the study area has been intensively managed, is it possible that the populations of the studied species are responding also to these successional changes? Secondly, it was not clear to me what was done with the historical aerial photographs - were they only used for disturbance history mapping? If so, what aspects of disturbances (extent, severity, frequency) were you looking at? Also, specificly what did you quantify when you said that you quantified forest structure from LiDAR data?
DISCUSSION: The study offers important viewpoints to conservation science. Besides the other mentioned merits, the question of scale, which is also discussed in the study is very relevant from conservation science perspective. Based on the abstract, I look forward for this communication in ECCB2018!
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INTRO: This is an interesting contriution exploring the links between insect disturbance and changes in habitat for a bat and two bird species.
MERITS: The authors have. it seems, very detailed information on disturbance history (high-resolution, time series) as well as considerable field data. This makes the study quite unique and interesting.
CRITIQUE: It remains somewhat unclear what was really done here (which statistical toosl where used to test for what)? Also, the bat part seems a bit detached from both the titel and intro (flagship species) and the rest of the abstract tht focusses on capercaillie and grouse. The bat part is also different since it does not include the time dimension, which seems key for the assessment surrounding birds, and does not focus on habitat but rather on behaviour. Either you drop the bat part, or you could introduce more clearly how the two parts are complementary. I would also recommend to be more specific in the titel on which taxa are studied here.
DISCUSSION: The abstract remains quite shallow on what was actually found and what the implications of these findings are.
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INTRO: This spatial ecology study analyses the occurrence and/or habitat use of one bat and two bird flagship species in areas affected by bark beetle outbreaks. The work combines different methods to sample animal abundances and behaviour and analyse them in relation to habitat characteristics.
MERITS: The idea behind the study is interesting for a conservation biology congress because conservation-concern species are used to infer positive or negative effects of forests disturbances. It is also timely beacuse insect outbreaks are currently a main economical and ecological perturbation in European forests. The context and objectives are clearly expressed and the remote sensing methods used contribute to the newness of the study.
CRITIQUE: My main concern regarding this abstract is the lack of information provided. The reader can be surprised by the sudden transition from the methods to the sentence "Our results increase our understanding of how to manage natural disturbances for species conservation..." I understand that data has maybe not been fully analysed so far but, what are these results? I think that at least a sentence regarding main bat results and a sentence about grouse results is lacking. temporal and spatial information is also lacking.
DISCUSSION: It seems a very interesting study, but the importance and potential implications of the research is difficult to asses without seeing the results (see comments the previous section).
The last sentence should be clarified, in my opinion. What are the management options for these "infested forests"? Maybe the first three sentences of the abstract can be reduced a bit and this idea of post-disturbance managament included. Also, you mention "post-disturbance biological legacies" for the first time in the last sentence. What are these legacies and what is their role?
It is unclear why initially you talk about two conservation-concern species and then the mehods focus on thee species.
