Beetle communities reared from beech branches and associated forest and environmental variables

Branch bundles of different sizes consisting of beech branches were exposed in the forest for one year to be colonized by saproxylic beetles and later reared for one year in emergence traps. All beetles emerging from the branches were collected.

Overall 244 branch bundles are included and we found 66 beetles species (23511 individuals) of which 43 were classified as saproxylic (20873 individuals). #### Species data (2 tables) Two community matrices (including abundance): one for saproxylic beetles and one for all beetles. Beetles were classfied as saproxylic following an extended list of the list reported in Schmidl & Bussler (2004). #### Model data (1 table) *Response variables* Species richness and abundance of (saproxylic) beetles. *Branch bundles* Branch bundles consisted of 1, 3, 6 or 12 branches and each bundle size was installed at each of the 69 plots.