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Most European forests are used for timber production. Given the limited extent of unmanaged (and especially primary) forests, it is essential to include commercial forests in the conservation of forest biodiversity. In order to develop ecologically sustainable forest management practices, it is important to understand the management impacts on forest-dwelling organisms. Experiments allow testing the effects of alternative management strategies, and monitoring of multiple taxa informs us on the response range across forest-dwelling organisms. To provide a representative picture of the currently available information, metadata on 28 multi-taxa forest management experiments were collected from 14 European countries. We demonstrate the potential of compiling these experiments in a single network to upscale results from the local to continental level and indicate directions for future research. Among the different forest types, temperate deciduous beech and oak-dominated forests are the best represented in the multi-taxa management experiments. Of all the experimental treatments, innovative ways of traditional management techniques (e.g., gap cutting and thinning) and conservation-oriented interventions (e.g., microhabitat enrichment) provide the best opportunity for large-scale analyses. Regarding the organism groups, woody regeneration, herbs, fungi, beetles, bryophytes, birds and lichens offer the largest potential for addressing management–biodiversity relationships at the European level. We identified knowledge gaps regarding boreal, hemiboreal and broadleaved evergreen forests, the treatments of large herbivore exclusion, prescribed burning and forest floor or water manipulations, and the monitoring of soil-dwelling organisms and some vertebrate classes, e.g., amphibians, reptiles and mammals. To improve multi-site comparisons, design of future experiments should be fitted to the set-up of the ongoing projects and standardised biodiversity sampling is suggested. However, the network described here opens the way to learn lessons on the impact on forest biodiversity of different management techniques at the continental level, and thus, supports biodiversity conservation in managed forests.

Abstract Detecting the molecular basis of local adaptation and identifying selective drivers is still challenging in nonmodel species. The use of purely population genetic approaches is limited by some characteristics of genetic systems, such as pleiotropy and polygenic control, and parallel evidence from phenotypic‐based experimental comparisons is required. In long‐lived organisms, the detection of selective pressures might also be precluded by evolutionary lag times in response to the environment. Here, we used the English yew to showcase an example of a multiscale integrative approach in a nonmodel species with limited plant and genomic resources. We combined information from two independent sources, phenotypes in a common environment and genomic data in natural populations, to investigate the signature of selection. Growth differences among populations in a common environment, and phenological patterns of both shoot elongation and male strobili maturation, were associated with climate clines, providing evidence for local adaptation and guiding us in the selection of populations for genomic analyses. We used information on over 25,000 SNPs from c. 1,200 genes to infer the demographic history and to test for molecular signatures of selection at different levels: SNP, gene, and biological pathway. Our results confirmed an overall demographic history of population decline, but we also found evidence for putative local adaptation at the molecular level. We identified or confirmed several candidate genes for positive and negative selection in forest trees, including the pseudo‐response regulator 7 (PRR7), an essential component of the circadian clock in plants. In addition, we successfully tested an approach to detect polygenic adaptation in biological pathways, allowing us to identify the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway as a candidate stress‐response pathway that deserves further attention in other plants. Finally, our study contributes to the emerging view that explaining contemporary standing genetic variation requires considering adaptation to past climates, especially for long‐lived trees.

Abstract   Pyrola rotundifolia (Ericaceae, Pyroleae tribe) is an understorey subshrub that was recently demonstrated to receive considerable amount of carbon from its fungal mycorrhizal associates. So far, little is known of the identity of these fungi and the mycorrhizal anatomy in the Pyroleae. Using 140 mycorrhizal root fragments collected from two Estonian boreal forests already studied in the context of mixotrophic Ericaceae in sequence analysis of the ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer region, we recovered 71 sequences that corresponded to 45 putative species in 19 fungal genera. The identified fungi were mainly ectomycorrhizal basidiomycetes, including Tomentella, Cortinarius, Russula, Hebeloma, as well as some ectomycorrhizal and/or endophytic ascomycetes. The P. rotundifolia fungal communities of the two forests did not differ significantly in terms of species richness, diversity and nutritional mode. The relatively high diversity retrieved suggests that P. rotundifolia does not have a strict preference for any fungal taxa. Anatomical analyses showed typical arbutoid mycorrhizae, with variable mantle structures, uniseriate Hartig nets and intracellular hyphal coils in the large epidermal cells. Whenever compared, fungal ultrastructure was congruent with the molecular identification. Similarly to other mixotrophic and autotrophic pyroloids in the same forests, P. rotundifolia shares its mycorrhizal fungal associates with surrounding trees that are likely a carbon source for pyroloids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]