Fighting behaviour in Broscus cephalotes

Die Kämpfe der Hirschkäfer sind allgemein bekannt. Die Männchen versuchen dabei, sich gegenseitig mit ihren Mandibeln umzuwerfen oder vom Stamm zu hebeln. Hier kämpfen Rivalen um die Weibchen. Das gilt nach der Beschreibung von STANEK (1984) auch für die Kämpfe des Scarabaeiden Lethrus apterus. CROWSON (1981) erwähnt zusätzlich Dynastinae. Über Kampfverhalten bei Carabiden gibt es nur äußerst spärliche Hinweise. Das Kampfverhalten von Scarites buparius wurde von ALICATA et al. (1980) beschrieben. BRANDMAYR (mdl.) hat Kämpfe bei Caterus beobachtet, allerdings nur zweimal. Angeregt von ZETTO BRANDMAYR et al. (2000), die einen Zusammenhang fanden zwischen dem Bau der Mandibeln und der besonders guten Fähigkeit von Siagona europaea, Ameisen zu fangen und zu verzehren, wurde die Nahrungswahl von Broscus cephalotes untersucht (MOSSAKOWSKI 2003). Das Kämpfen dieser Käfer untereinander war nicht zu übersehen.Broscus cephalotes attacks everything, also con-specific individuals. This may happen by a Broscus sitting at the opening of its tube or when running around and another beetle runs across. In most cases, fights started and ended without any obvious reason. A real hunting behaviour could not be observed. The fighting behaviour can be characterized as catch-ascatch- can and, in our experiments, was displayed most frequently under artificial daytime conditions. It is interpreted as fighting for prey

Phylogeny of the genus Percus (Coleoptera: Carabidae) – nuclear genes and the basal splits

The phylogeny of the western Mediterranean genus Percus s.l. (Coleoptera, Carabidae) was analysed using partial DNA sequences of the nuclear 28S rRNA gene (865 bp). All 18 species of Percus s.l. with exception of P. espagnoli from the Balearic Islands were included. Phylogenetic analysis using the Maximum likelihood method reveals that the genus splits into three groups. The French Percus villai stands on its own. The Tyrrhenian species of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and the Italian mainland form the second group. Within this group, the phylogenetic relationships are not resolved. The third group includes Percus plicatus from Mallorca and the species of the subgenus Pseudopercus from the Iberian Peninsula. These results indicate that the subgenus Percus s.str. is paraphyletic. The split of Pseudopercus and P. plicatus probably occurred with the separation of the Balearic islands from the Iberian peninsula (20million years ago) or by the flooding of the Mediterranean after the Messinian salinity crisis (5.3 million years ago). Based on these assumptions, the divergence rate of the 28S gene can be estimated as being at 0.22–0.27% or at 0.99–1.01% per million years

Different behaviour of mitochondrial and nuclear markers: introgression and the evolutionary history of Chrysocarabus (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

Phylogenetic analyses of Chrysocarabus taxa using different markers result in different phylogenetic trees. In particular, the mitochondrial gene tree contradicts the results of morphological and inbreeding studies. Two very different haplotypes of Carabus splendens Olivier, 1790 do not form a clade within this phylogenetic tree. We have earlier proposed that contradictory results are due to introgression. To verify our hypothesis, we analysed the internal transcribed spacer 2. No substitutions were observed in these nuclear sequences between the individuals of Carabus splendens, which contain the different mitochondrial haplotypes in question. The differences in the gene trees based on mitochondrial and nuclear sequences can be explained with at least two introgression events

Forty years of carabid beetle research in Europe - from taxonomy, biology, ecology and population studies to bioindication, habitat assessment and conservation

Volume: 100Start Page: 55End Page: 14

Ecology and Conservation of the Dutch Ground Beetle Fauna - Lessons from 66 Years of Pitfall Trapping

Carl H. Lindroth was the first to present a comprehensive survey with his fundamental work on the Fennoscandian carabid beetles, covering all ecological aspects. The knowledge of the Dutch carabid beetle fauna is also exceptionally good what is especially thanks to Piet den Boer’s initiative and the work of his followers.Apart from the comprehensive book by Hans Turin (2000) on The Netherlands carabid beetles, I only see major publications on parts of a country or certain aspects, respectively, such as Trautner et al. (2017) on carabids of a German Federal State, Baden-Württemberg or Paill (2009) on endemic species in Austria.Turin et al. (1991) analysed the data bank on Dutch carabid beetles on the basis of 1.616 year samples from the period 1953-1983. The present book contains updated and extended analyses of the extraordinary huge data bank on Dutch carabid beetles of 4.363 pitfall trap year samples with more than 3 million specimens covering additionally the period 1984-2018

Introgression or low molecular differentiation? The case of Carabus maacki

AbstractBackground: Carabus (Limnocarabus) maacki aquatilis and C. (Euleptocarabus) porrecticollis of the Japanese Island Honshu reveal a remarkably low sequence difference in the mitochondrial ND5 gene, similar to that existing between the subspecies of C. porrecticollis although the morphology is quite different. On the other hand C. maacki aquatilis from Japan is quite distinct to European C. clatratus in ND5 sequences and that was the reason to established C. maacki as a separate species, formerly a subspecies of C. clatratus. My hypothesis is that data on these taxa are better interpreted by assuming that C. maacki is in fact a C. clatratus but suffered in its Japanese form aquatilis an introgression from C. porrecticollis. Material and Methods: Twenty-one specimens were sequenced and seven sequences were retrieved from GenBank. They comprise C. porrecticollis and C. maacki aquatilis form Japan, C. maacki maacki from the Asian mainland, and C. clatratus from Far East and Europe. The data were analysed using the maximum likelihood method and were presented as a tree and as visualisation of sequences differences.Results: The hypothesis that C. maacki is a C. clatratus but suffered an introgression by C. porrecticollis is supported by the results because (i) C. maacki maacki from Russian Primorje clustered with Far East and European C. clatratus in mitochondrial ND5 sequences, and (ii) Japanese C. maacki aquatilis clustered with C. clatratus in the nuclear gene data of wingless, but both differ in the same way to C. porrecticollis.Conclusions: The presented data corroborate the hypothesis of an introgression from C. porrecticollis to the population of C. maacki aquatilis on Honshu, Japan. The taxon maacki cannot maintain species status. Its two subspecies should be considered as subspecies of C. clatratus (C. clatratus maacki from the Asian mainland, C. clatratus aquatilis from Japan).</p

A plea for using qualitative aspects in the interpretation of ecological field data as revealed by carabid beetle assemblages of a pristine salt marsh

The evaluation of ecological field data can be done by an increasing number of quantitative methods. The application of these methods often is often blind against two kinds of problems: (i) the data often do not meet the requirements of a method, e.g., as an ultra-metric structure of the data in the case of hierarchical cluster analysis. In such cases, the result will be misleading because the presentation of results is ultra-metric independent on the structure of the data. (ii) Most of the animals are able to move actively or may  drift passively by wind, etc. Therefore, species occurring by accident like vagrants have to be eliminated from the assemblage of animals at a particular site before a quantitative method is applied. In addition, the result of a quantitative analysis has to be checked for its ecological plausibility. This is a qualitative step, which can only be done by taking into account the known data on biology and ecology of the species. Some pitfalls of an exclusive application of quantitative methods will be demonstrated in this paper using a data set of salt marsh Carabidae

High molecular diversity in the Carabus variolosus/nodulosus complex

Starting point of this study was the problem considering the status of Carabus variolous and C. nodulosus: French and some German authors classified them as species, most German authors as subspecies and Casale as semispecies. We performed analyses of mitochondrial genes (COI-5', COI-3', ND5) as well as nuclear ones (ITS2, wingless) and analysed the DNA sequences using Seqotron, CLUSTALX (editing and alignment), MEGA, DNAML, SplitsTree (phylogeny and network), 4SALE (compensatory base changes), and BEAST (coalescence). We could study specimens from all regions except the western most part of the distribution area (Massif Central and French Jura, France). The mitochondrial DNA data resulted in a geographic pattern of high diversity within both taxa indicating a series of glacial refuges. In addition, a considerably large area was found were introgressive hybridisation took place in the past - at least two times by nodulosus of different regions into variolosus. The nuclear DNA data show a clear and constant difference between both taxa. In consequence, this complex of forms may be characterised as semispecies from an evolutionary viewpoint but taxonomically as one species because of  hybridisation and the lack of compensatory bases changes