| The diversity, expressed as species richness in equal-sized samples, of wood-living beetles in successional stages of deciduous forest after forest fires approximately 100 years ago did not differ between patch sizes in this study. Thus, the crucial question for conservation is whether the lack of reduction in diversity in small patches means that a number of small patches can elevate the regional diversity as efficiently as can one larger area. In the present study, the smaller patches did not differ from larger patches in substrate availability, quality, or heterogeneity. The frequency of a group of species was measured as the number of occurrences, viz. the number of trees on which a species was found, summed over all species in the group. The number of... |
