These included leaving retention tree groups in the clear-cut areas 8, or various implementations of the shelterwood system 9. The emerging need for healthy and productive forests, which also deliver the conservation of biodiversity, has led to modifications of basic even-aged rotational practices. Rotation forestry has many negative long-term effects on habitat preservation, forest health and biodiversity 7. These practices eventually lead to even-aged forest stands 5, 6. The most widespread forest management type in European broadleaved forests in the past two centuries is rotation forestry, including uniform shelterwood and clear-cutting silvicultural systems. To secure the ecosystem services forests provide, it is of paramount importance to understand how management practices impact different components of the system. Since nearly all temperate forests are under forestry management 4, the functioning of forest ecosystems largely depends on the interaction between the ecological processes and human management. The sustainable functioning of forests largely depends on the ecological stability and resilience 3 of their species assemblages and the ecological links between them. They also provide timber as raw material and are essential for human wellbeing 1, 2. Similar content being viewed by othersÄeciduous forests play an important role in the assimilation of carbon dioxide, in carbon storage, in reducing air pollution and flood risks. At the present fine scale of implementation the magnitude of changes was not different among forestry treatments, irrespective of their severity. Overall, spiders gave a prompt and species specific response to treatments that was by the fifth year showing signs of relatively quick recovery to pre-treatment state. The patchy implementation of the treatments induced modest increase in both gamma and beta diversity of spiders in the stand. These changes were correlated mostly to treatment-related light intensity and humidity gradients. Species composition changes were more pronounced and treatment specific, initially diverging from the control plots, but becoming more similar again by the fifth year. In the treatment plots spider abundance and species richness increased marginally. Spiders were sampled by pitfall traps, and detailed vegetation, soil and microclimate data were collected throughout the experiment. In an oak-hornbeam forest stand, five treatments, belonging to clear-cutting, shelterwood and continuous cover forestry systems, were implemented using randomised complete block design. We aimed to uncover how silvicultural treatments affected the ground-dwelling spider communities during the first five years of a forest ecological experiment. To secure the ecosystem services forests provide, it is important to understand how different management practices impact various components of these ecosystems.
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