Forest management increases the amount of edges or ecotones on the landscape. Ecotones are important transition zones, representing a rapid change in landscape physiognomy and can support greater biodiversity than the adjacent habitats. It is therefore essential to understand how species respond to such habitat transitions. The Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) provide numerous important ecosystem services in forests as herbivores, pollinators, and as food for many birds, bats, and other animals. It is therefore important to understand how this taxon responds to forest management in the boreal forest, and specifically how Lepidoptera assemblages change across anthropogenic forest edges. Via light trapping in clear-cut, forest, and edge habitats, we quantified the extent to which forestry-created ecotones influence nocturnal macromoth assemblages in the eastern boreal forest. We estimated species diversity as Hill numbers, calculated abundance, assessed composition with nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination, and used indicator species analysis to determine how assemblage structure differed between the three habitats. We collected a total of 3486 individuals, representing 187 species that belonged to six families over 108 trap-nights. We collected a higher abundance of nocturnal macromoths in edges than clear-cuts, but not than forest. The composition of edges was intermediate between clear-cuts and forests, but differed significantly from adjacent habitats and included many unique species. Forest sites supported lower species richness, Simpson diversity and Shannon diversity than clear-cuts and edges, which overlapped with each other. Overall, our study indicates that the habitat created by forest edges supports unique macromoth assemblages. Moreover, the macromoth assemblage in this habitat is rich and abundant as compared to the adjacent habitats. This has important implications for the maintenance of biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services in the boreal, as well as forestry in the context of natural disturbance emulation.

森林管理增加了景观边缘或过渡带的数量。过渡带是重要的过渡区，代表着景观地貌的快速变化，可以支持比邻近生境更大的生物多样性。因此，至关重要的是要了解物种如何对这种栖息地过渡做出反应。鳞翅目（飞蛾和蝴蝶）作为食草动物，传粉媒介以及许多鸟类，蝙蝠和其他动物的食物，在森林中提供了许多重要的生态系统服务。因此，重要的是要了解该分类单元如何响应北方森林中的森林经营，尤其是鳞翅目在整个人为森林边缘如何变化。通过在清晰的森林和边缘生境中捕获光，我们量化了林业创造的过渡带影响东部北方森林夜间夜蛾组合的程度。我们用希尔数来估计物种多样性，计算丰度，使用非度量多维标度排序来评估组成，并使用指示剂物种分析来确定三个生境之间的组合结构如何不同。我们总共收集了3486个个体，代表着在108个诱捕夜中属于6个科的187种。我们在边缘采集到的夜蛾数量要比纯树更高，但比森林要多。边缘的成分介于开阔地带和森林之间，但与相邻的生境有很大不同，并且包括许多独特的物种。森林场所支持了较低的物种丰富度，辛普森分集和香农分集比清晰的边界和边缘多，它们相互重叠。总体而言，我们的研究表明，森林边缘创造的栖息地支持独特的大型蛾类组合。而且，与邻近的生境相比，该生境中的大型蛾组合丰富而丰富。这对于在自然干扰模拟的背景下维护北方地区以及林业中的生物多样性和提供生态系统服务具有重要意义。