Abstract The greatest threat to biodiversity is the alteration and destruction of habitats, and one of the causes is tree plantation, which normally are monospecific and unnatural high-density forest stands. In Spain these contain mainly Pinus species, and cover 25% of the forested area. Due to their dense canopy cover, these monocultures harbor poor communities in terms of species richness and abundance of other organisms, such as reptiles. In November 2014, wind storms affected a pine plantation in the western end of the Sierra Nevada Natural Park, totally or partially knocking down pines 65 years old. We have studied the response of the reptile community in the affected plots three and five years after the disturbance. Due to the low thermal quality of pine plantations for reptiles, we hypothesized that reptile community metrics (abundance and species richness) would be positively affected by this perturbation. We found greater richness and density of reptiles in the plots affected by maximum and intermediate disturbance than in the non-affected plots. We conclude that natural catastrophic events such as wind storms can diversify reptile communities in Mediterranean pine plantations thanks to a rapid response of generalist reptile species.

中文翻译：

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大风对松林爬行动物群落恢复的积极影响

摘要 生物多样性面临的最大威胁是栖息地的改变和破坏，原因之一是植树造林，通常是单种和非自然的高密度林分。在西班牙，这些主要包含松树种，占森林面积的 25%。由于它们茂密的树冠覆盖，这些单一栽培在物种丰富度和其他生物（如爬行动物）的丰富度方面拥有贫穷的社区。2014 年 11 月，风暴影响了内华达山脉自然公园西端的一个松树种植园，完全或部分摧毁了 65 岁的松树。我们研究了扰乱三年和五年后受影响地块中爬行动物群落的反应。由于用于爬行动物的松树种植园的热质量低，我们假设爬行动物群落指标（丰富度和物种丰富度）会受到这种扰动的积极影响。我们发现受最大和中间干扰影响的地块中爬行动物的丰富度和密度比未受影响地块中的更大。我们得出的结论是，由于通才爬行动物物种的快速反应，风暴等自然灾害事件可以使地中海松树种植园的爬行动物群落多样化。