Background mortality drivers of European tree species: climate change matters.

Increases in tree mortality rates have been highlighted in different biomes over the past decades. However, disentangling the effects of climate change on the temporal increase in tree mortality from those of management and forest dynamics remains a challenge. Using a modelling approach taking tree and stand characteristics into account, we sought to evaluate the impact of climate change on background mortality for the most common European tree species. We focused on background mortality, which is the mortality observed in a stand in the absence of abrupt disturbances, to avoid confusion with mortality events unrelated to long-term changes in temperature and rainfall. We studied 372 974 trees including 7312 dead trees from forest inventory data surveyed across France between 2009 and 2015. Factors related to competition, stand characteristics, management intensity, and site conditions were the expected preponderant drivers of mortality. Taking these main drivers into account, we detected a climate change signal on 45% of the 43 studied species, explaining an average 6% of the total modelled mortality. For 18 out of the 19 species sensitive to climate change, we evidenced greater mortality with increasing temperature or decreasing rainfall. By quantifying the mortality excess linked to the current climate change for European temperate forest tree species, we provide new insights into forest vulnerability that will prove useful for adapting forest management to future conditions.

[Nomenclature of wood-inhabiting groups in forest entomology: synthesis and semantic adjustments]. / Nomenclature des groupes écologiques d'insectes liés au bois : synthèse et mise au point sémantique.

The terminology of ecological groups in saproxylic insects (organisms depending on dying or dead wood) is used ambiguously by forest entomologists. We therefore propose a standardized typology of wood-eating groups, based on two crossed factors, i.e. nature and physiological status of woody tissues. We define primary and secondary xylophagous insects (corticiphagous, cambiophagous, xylemophagous), as well as saproxylophagous species. Insects indirectly related to dead wood are classified according to (i) the food regime: consumers of wood-associated resources (xylomycophagous, xylomycetophagous, opophagous), commensals (scavengers), predators, or (ii) the microhabitat users (fongicolous, cavicolous, succicolous).