Ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) diversity is higher in narrow hedges composed of a native compared to non-native trees in a Danish agricultural landscape

K

Environmental filtering is the main assembly rule of ground beetles in the forest and its edge but not in the adjacent grassland

K

A (light-hearted) classification of carabidologists

Conference Dinner Speech at the 19th European Carabidologists’ Meeting

No increase in fluctuating asymmetry in ground beetles (Carabidae) as urbanisation progresses

Environmental stress can lead to a reduction in developmental homeostasis, which could be reflected in increased variability of morphological traits. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is one possible manifestation of such a stress, and is often taken as a proxy for individual fitness. To test the usefulness of FA in morphological traits as an indicator of environmental quality, we studied the effect of urbanisation on FA in ground beetles (Carabidae) near a Danish city. First, we performed a critical examina- tion whether morphological character traits suggested in the literature displayed true fluctuating asymmetry in three common predatory ground beetles, Carabus nemoralis, Nebria brevicollis and Pterostichus melanarius. Eight metrical (length of the second and third antennal segments, elytral length, length of the first tarsus segment, length of the first and second tibiae, length of the proximal and distal spines on the first femurs) and one meristic (the number of spines on the second tibiae) traits were examined. Most of them showed FA but not consistently. Females generally displayed a higher level of FA than males. Finally, we examined the changes in the level of FA in bilateral morphological traits along an urbanisation gradient (forest - suburban forest - forest fragments in urban park) to test whether environmental stress created by urbanisation is reflected in FA. Ground beetles common along a Danish urbanisation gradient did not seem to indicate differences in habitat quality by their level of F

Effects of varying sampling effort on the observed diversity of carabid (Coleoptera: Carabidae) assemblages in the Danglobe Project, Denmark

Diversity relations among three stages of an urbanisation gradient were studied, using the Rényi scalable diversity index family and the Right Tail Sum (RTS) diversity. The rural areas were less diverse than either the urban or the suburban ones. The urban areas were more diverse considering the dominant species, while the suburban areas were more diverse considering the rare species. Next, we examined the impact of different sampling regimes on these diversity relations. A pulsating sampling method (sampling for 2 weeks every month) gave the same diversity ordering as continuous sampling. Further reduction in sampling period altered the diversity relations

Seasonal dynamics of common ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) along an urbanisation gradient near Sorø, Zealand, Denmark

The seasonal activity of six carabid species (Nebria brevicollis, Carabus nemoralis, C. hortensis, C. coriaceus, Pterostichus melanarius and Abax parallelepipedus) was studied along an urbanisation gradient (rural forest – suburban forest – forest fragments in urban park) in Sorø, Denmark, during April–October 2004 and 2005.Two groups were identified: 1) Species with constant seasonality, in which seasonal activity profiles did not differ along the gradient (C. hortensis, C. coriaceus, and A. parallelepipedus); 2) Species with flexible seasonality,with remarkable differences along the gradient and between the years (C. nemoralis, N. brevicollis and P. melanarius). In four out of six studied species, 2005 was less favourable than 2004. Spring activity in the urban habitat started earlier than in the suburban or forested ones. A better understanding of urban green infrastructures in biodiversity assessments may need the study of seasonality in order to distinguish whether the bioindicator’s responses are to habitat quality or stochastic seasonal events