Forest management and disturbances cause habitat fragmentation for saproxylic species living on old-growth attributes. The degree of habitat spatiotemporal continuity required by these species is a key question for designing biodiversity-friendly forestry, and it strongly depends on species’ dispersal. The “stability–dispersal” model predicts that species using stable habitats should have lower dispersal abilities than species associated with ephemeral habitat and thus respond to habitat availability at smaller scales.

We aimed at testing the stability–dispersal model by comparing the spatial scales at which saproxylic beetle guilds using substrates with contrasted stability (from stable to ephemeral: cavicolous, fungicolous, saproxylophagous and xylophagous guilds) are affected by landscape structure (i.e. habitat amount and aggregation).

We sampled saproxylic beetles using a spatially nested design (plots within landscape windows). We quantified habitat availability (tree cavities, polypores and deadwood) in 1-ha plots, 26-ha buffers around plots and 506-ha windows, and analyzed their effect on the abundance and diversity of associated guilds.

The habitat amount within plots and buffers positively affected the abundance of the cavicolous and the fungicolous guilds whereas saproxylophagous and xylophagous did not respond at these scales. The habitat aggregation within windows only positively affected the saproxylophagous species richness within plots and also on the similarity in species composition among plots.

Beetle guilds specialized on more stable habitat were affected by landscape structure at smaller spatial scales, which corroborated the stability–dispersal model. In managed forests, the spatial grain of conservation efforts should therefore be adapted to the target habitat lifetime.