Authors: Růžičková, Jana; Elek, Zoltán;

Animal behaviour can be a good proxy for any habitat alteration and can act as early warning signallers indicating the changes in community structures. The previous radio-tracking underlines the adverse effect of certain forestry treatments on carabid movement and also revealed that there is a no-movement phase in all trajectories. Nonetheless, there is no direct estimation for taxon-specific predation pressure on carabids which can be a proxy for the risk in habitat utilisation, often referred to as an ecological trap. In our study, we explored the predation pressure on carabids using 3D printed decoys installed in two types of forestry treatments, preparation cuts and clear-cuts, and control plots in a Hungarian oak-hornbeam forest. We estimated the seasonal, diurnal and treatment-specific aspects of the predation pressure on carabids as a complementary study of a preceding radio-tracking on the same experimental setup. Our results revealed a significantly higher predation risk in forestry treatments than in the control, especially for nights. In addition, the predator avoidance behaviour based on the non-movement phases in recorded trajectories also revealed the high predation pressure in the treatments. These findings clearly showed that a modified forest environment can shift ecological interactions between species.