In most temperate deciduous forests, windstorm is the main source of dead wood. However, the effects of this natural disturbance on ambrosia and bark beetle communities are poorly known. In managed oak-hornbeam forests storm-damaged in France in 1999, we sampled ambrosia (and secondly bark beetles) by ethanol-baited window-flight traps in 2001. By comparing uncleared gaps, undisturbed closed-canopy controls and seedling-sapling stands, we investigated the short-term effects of gap formation, gap size and surrounding landscape to provide a snapshot of scolytid response. Contrary to expectations, neither the abundance nor the richness of ambrosia beetle species was significantly higher in gaps than in undisturbed stands. Few responses in abundance at the species level and only a slight difference in assemblage composition were detected between gaps and closed-canopy controls. Gaps were more dissimilar from seedling-sapling stands, than from closed-canopy controls. More scolytid individuals and species were caught in gaps than in seedling-sapling stands. Mean local and cumulative richness peaked in mid-size gaps. Only mid-size gaps differed from closed-canopy controls in terms of species composition. We identified generalist gap species (Xyleborus saxesenii, X. cryptographus), but also species significantly more abundant in mid-size gaps (Platypus cylindrus, Xyloterus signatus). The faunistic peculiarity of mid-size gaps seemed to be partly related to a bias in oak density among gap size classes. Few landscape effects were observed. Only the scolytids on the whole and X. dispar were slightly favoured by an increasing density in fellings at the 78ha scale. We did not find any correlation between scolytid abundance and the surrounding closed-forest percentage area. We confirmed that temperate, deciduous, managed stands did not come under threat by ambrosia and bark beetle pests after the 1999 windstorm. Nonetheless, our data stressed the current expansion in western Europe of two invasive species, Xyleborus peregrinus and especially X. germanus, now the predominant scolytid in the three oak forests studied.