Section: Forest & Wood Sciences
Topic: Ecology, Statistics

Informative priors contribute to quantifying the occurrence rate of a rare tree-related microhabitat in a managed forest

Cottais, Pierre1 orcid ; Courbaud, Benoît2 orcid; Larrieu, Laurent1, 3 orcid; Gouix, Nicolas4; Laroche, Fabien1 orcid  
1UMR 1201 Dynafor, Univ Toulouse, INRAE, INPT, EI PURPAN, France
2UR LESSEM, Univ Grenoble Alpes, INRAE, France
3CNPF-CRPF Occitanie, France
4CEN Occitanie, France

Corresponding author(s): Laroche, Fabien (fabien.laroche@inrae.fr)

10.24072/pcjournal.697 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e33

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Tree-related microhabitats (TreMs) are key features for forest biodiversity, and knowing their accumulation rate is essential to design integrative management strategies. Many types of TreMs are associated to large old trees and show slow ontogenical processes. The rarity of such TreMs (particularly in intensively managed forests) hinder the estimation of their occurrence rate along tree growth. Here, we used a continental meta-analysis on TreMs occurrence rate along tree growth to build informative priors for a model of trunk-base rot-hole occurrence on oaks within the Grésigne forest, France --- a context where stand management and tree DBH were confounded. We explored whether the use of informative priors could improve the identifiability, the precision of estimates and the predictive abilities of the model. Without prior information, the low variance of tree DBH within management modalities rendered the model poorly identifiable and prevented the detection of an effect of tree DBH per se across the range of explored tree DBH. By contrast, using informative priors contributed to improve the precision of estimates and lead to detecting a positive effect of tree DBH per se.  Informative priors did not degrade the model fit and clearly improved predictive abilities on new stands. In particular, while the model without prior information did not predict the occurrence of trunk-base rot-holes significantly better than a purely random guess, the model with informative priors did. Irrespective of the prior used, models suggested that the high recruitment of trunk-base rot-holes in Grésigne may be a temporary management effect in stands undergoing conversion from coppice-with-standards to high forest through sprout thinning, which will lead to conservation issues for cavicolous saproxylic species when all conversions are complete. Because using informative priors was simple and beneficial in our study, it should be further explored in other local applied contexts to orientate forest management.

Published online:
DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.697
Type: Research article

Cottais, Pierre  1 ; Courbaud, Benoît  2 ; Larrieu, Laurent  1 , 3 ; Gouix, Nicolas  4 ; Laroche, Fabien  1

1 UMR 1201 Dynafor, Univ Toulouse, INRAE, INPT, EI PURPAN, France
2 UR LESSEM, Univ Grenoble Alpes, INRAE, France
3 CNPF-CRPF Occitanie, France
4 CEN Occitanie, France
License: CC-BY 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights
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     title = {Informative priors contribute to quantifying the occurrence rate of a rare tree-related microhabitat in a managed forest
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     journal = {Peer Community Journal},
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Cottais, P.; Courbaud, B.; Larrieu, L.; Gouix, N.; Laroche, F. Informative priors contribute to quantifying the occurrence rate of a rare tree-related microhabitat in a managed forest. Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article  no. e33. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.697

PCI peer reviews and recommendation, and links to data, scripts, code and supplementary information: 10.24072/pci.forestwoodsci.100185

Conflict of interest of the recommender and peer reviewers:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.

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