Butterflies take advantage of contemporary forestry: Clear-cuts as temporary grasslands Mari-Liis Viljur ⇑ , Tiit Teder Department of Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Vanemuise 46, 51014 Tartu, Estonia article info Article history: Received 29 February 2016 Received in revised form 8 May 2016 Accepted 2 June 2016 Available online 13 June 2016 Keywords: Forest cutovers Logging Habitat loss Novel habitats Lepidoptera Woodland abstract Contemporary forest landscapes in boreal and temperate environments, harvested by clear-cutting, con- tain various novel types of open spaces which are potentially suitable for species inhabiting natural or semi-natural open habitats. However, systematic analyses identifying the share of the regional species pool that can take advantage of this opportunity are missing. We assessed the importance of such forest openings for open-habitat butterflies in Estonia in Northern Europe by comparing butterfly species rich- ness and composition in forest clear-cuts with their regional species pool. The species richness of butter- flies in clear-cuts appeared to be remarkably high: we recorded altogether 81% of the total regional species pool across the study sites. Clear-cuts were inhabited by a very high share (79%) of regionally occurring grassland species, as well as nearly complete sets of open-habitat generalists and forest species. Redundancy analysis showed that clear-cuts in forests with different environmental characteristics har- bour distinct butterfly assemblages, their contribution to the butterfly fauna in forest landscapes being thus complementary. This as well as several other lines of evidence indicate that most butterfly species can form resident populations in harvested forest landscapes. Our findings demonstrate that considering novel types of forest openings as ‘temporary meadows’ can substantially improve the conservation pro- spects for butterflies and other organisms that have traditionally been considered to inhabit grasslands and other open habitats in agricultural landscapes. Human-altered ecosystems may thus prove to be a viable alternative where restoring or maintaining natural and semi-natural habitats is impossible. Ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Changes in land use and management practices during the last century have led to a dramatic decrease of natural and semi-natural open habitats in agricultural landscapes across Europe (Hooftman and Bullock, 2012; Cousins et al., 2015). The loss and fragmentation of such habitats, mostly either due to agricul- tural intensification or afforestation, continue to pose a major threat to many organism groups (Helm et al., 2006; Brambilla et al., 2010; Krauss et al., 2010; Marini et al., 2010; Van Swaay et al., 2010). Var- ious conservation practices have been proposed and applied to pre- vent the decline and extinction of populations associated with these habitats, ranging from more biodiversity friendly forms of agricul- ture to the establishment of nature reserves and habitat restoration (Winqvist et al., 2011; Woodcock et al., 2012; Arponen et al., 2013). However, the effectiveness of such practices is often limited due to the influence of land-use changes in the wider landscape surround- ing protected or managed habitats (Schneider and Fry, 2001; Filz et al., 2012; Öckinger et al., 2012). Moreover, the maintenance and restoration of traditional landscapes and habitats are often associ- ated with high socio-economic costs. Taking advantage of human-altered ecosystems (i.e. novel, impacted or designed ecosystems, see Morse and Pellissier, 2014, for classification) may provide another opportunity to mitigate the loss of natural and semi-natural habitats (Hobbs et al., 2006; Lundholm and Richardson, 2010). Although intensive land-use and industrial activities can heavily modify environments, condi- tions in some of those changed areas are similar to those in more natural ecosystems (Lenda et al., 2011; Tropek et al., 2013). Indeed, various landscape elements that have started to be increasingly common relatively recently (e.g., mining areas, railway embank- ments, power line corridors) have been shown to offer alternative habitats for multiple open-habitat species (R ˇ ehounková and Prach, 2010; Lensu et al., 2011; Tropek et al., 2013; Moron ´ et al., 2014). Novel types of open habitat areas, such as clear-cuts and various right-of-ways (e.g., power and gas line corridors), have become increasingly common also in forest landscapes. In many boreal and temperate regions, the area of open habitats in managed forests exceeds by far the area of semi-natural grasslands http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2016.06.002 0378-1127/Ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: mviljur@ut.ee (M.-L. Viljur), tiit.teder@ut.ee (T. Teder). Forest Ecology and Management 376 (2016) 118–125 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Ecology and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco