Table Of ContentINSECTS AND OTHER TERRESTRIAL ARTHROPODS:
BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR
B
EETLES
B , E
IODIVERSITY COLOGY AND
R E
OLE IN THE NVIRONMENT
No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no
expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No
liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information
contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in
rendering legal, medical or any other professional services.
I O T
NSECTS AND THER ERRESTRIAL
A : B , C
RTHROPODS IOLOGY HEMISTRY
B
AND EHAVIOR
Additional books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website
under the Series tab.
Additional e-books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website
under the e-book tab.
INSECTS AND OTHER TERRESTRIAL ARTHROPODS:
BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR
B
EETLES
B , E
IODIVERSITY COLOGY AND
R E
OLE IN THE NVIRONMENT
CAMILLA STACK
EDITOR
New York
Copyright © 2015 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher.
For permission to use material from this book please contact us: [email protected]
NOTICE TO THE READER
The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or
implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No
liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of
information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special,
consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers‘ use of, or
reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated
and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.
Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in
this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage
to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise
contained in this publication.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the
subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not
engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert
assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A
DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS.
Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beetles : biodiversity, ecology and role in the environment / editor: Camilla Stack.
pages cm. -- (Insects and other terrestrial arthropods: biology, chemistry and behavior)
Includes index.
ISBN: (cid:28)(cid:26)(cid:27)(cid:16)(cid:20)(cid:16)(cid:25)(cid:22)(cid:23)(cid:25)(cid:22)(cid:16)(cid:23)(cid:19)(cid:24)(cid:16)(cid:21) (eBook)
1. Beetles--Ecology. I. Stack, Camilla, editor. II. Series: Insects and other terrestrial arthropods--
biology, chemistry and behavior series.
QL573.B438 2015
595.76--dc23
2014040968
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Chapter 1 The Positive Effects of Prescribed Burning of Clear-Cuts on
Saproxylic Beetle Diversity Are Short-Lived and Depend on
Forest-Fire Continuity 1
Jonas Victorsson, Lars-Ove Wikars and Stefan Ås
Chapter 2 Community Assembly of Saproxylic Beetles in Old-Growth Forest
and Recently Burnt Forest 27
Jonas Victorsson
Chapter 3 Assessing the Potential Role of Ground Beetles (Coleoptera) As
Ecological Indicators in Tropical Ecosystems: A Review 51
Reinaldo Lucas Cajaiba, Eduardo Périco, João Alexandre Cabral
and Mário Santos
Chapter 4 Twig-Girdler Beetles of the Atlantic Rainforest 85
Alberto Arab, Claudia Moreno Paro, Gustavo Quevedo Romero,
Gustavo Schiffler and João Vasconcellos-Neto
Chapter 5 Biology, Ecology and Strategies for Control of Stored-Grain
Beetles: A Review 105
Thiago H. Napoleão, Afonso C. Agra-Neto,
Bernardo R. Belmonte, Emmanuel V. Pontual
and Patrícia M.G. Paiva
Chapter 6 Decaying Matters: Coleoptera Involved in Heterotrophic Systems 123
Paryse Nadeau, Monic Thibault, Finbarr G. Horgan,
Jean-Philippe Michaud, Franck Gandiaga, Charles Comeau
and Gaétan Moreau
Chapter 7 How a Locality Can Have so Many Species?
A Case Study with Dung Beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae)
In a Tropical Rain Forest in Colombia 175
Jorge Ari Noriega A.
vi Contents
Chapter 8 Biodiversity in Geographically Remote Natural Populations of
Adalia Ladybirds (Coleoptera: Coсcinellidae) 205
Elena V. Shaikevich and Ilia A. Zakharov
Chapter 9 Ladybird Diversity on Crops and Ecology of Cocicnelle algerica
Kovar in Tunisia 227
Ben Halima Kamel Monia and Mdellel Lassad
Index 239
PREFACE
Insects have been shown to be appropriate ecological indicators for evaluating changes in
the environment, due to several characteristics that they possess. An excellent group are
beetles (Coleoptera), the largest group of insects, with about four hundred thousand known
species, distributed in more than a hundred families occupying practically all ecosystems and
feeding on a variety food sources. This book examines several species of beetles. It examines
the biodiversity, ecology and role in the environment of beetles.
Chapter 1 - Before modern forestry started, forest fire was the dominating large-scale
disturbance in boreal forest. Prescribed burning of clear-cuts is increasingly used as a
conservation measure but is potentially less beneficial for fire-associated species than burning
of intact forest. The authors investigated the temporal effect of prescribed burning of clear-
cuts in two regions in central Sweden: one region with a relatively unbroken forest-fire
continuity (Orsa) and one region with a broken fire continuity (Långshyttan) more typical for
Fennoscandia. The dead wood associated (saproxylic) beetle fauna was sampled with ten
trunk-window traps in each of 16 clear-cuts. The authors used a paired design with two clear-
cuts that had been logged at the same time and where one had been subjected to prescribed
burning one or two years after clear-felling. The authors sampled clear-cuts either the same
year as burning (0-year old) or 1-, 2- or 4-years post-burning. In Orsa the authors sampled
five pairs (0-4 years old) and in Långshyttan three pairs (0-2 years old).
The authors caught 147 species (5908 individuals) of saproxylic beetles and 33 of those
species were fire-associated. There was a pronounced temporal effect of prescribed burning
on beetle abundance and species richness. The year of the fire there was a higher abundance
and species richness in the burnt clear-cuts than in the unburnt clear-cuts. This positive effect
disappeared already after one year. This pattern remained when the authors restricted their
analysis to only fire-associated species.
There were several regional differences consistent with a better fire continuity in Orsa:
(1) In four out of five clear-cut pairs in Orsa there was a positive effect of burning on
abundance and species richness of fire-associated species. In Långshyttan there was no such
effect. (2) In Orsa the species composition of the fire-associated species differed between
burnt and unburnt clear-cuts in four out of five pairs. In Långshyttan there was a difference
only in one out of three pairs and that difference was smaller than the differences in Orsa. (3)
When the authors restricted their analysis to 0- to 2-year old clear-cuts in order to have
identical sample sizes in both regions, the authors found 725 individuals of 25 species of fire-
associated species in Orsa and 218 individuals of 24 species in Långshyttan. (4) The four fire-
viii Camilla Stack
dependent species that the authors found were the most specialised species and three of these,
Melanophila acuminata, Sphaeriestes stockmanni, and Acmaeops septentrionis were only
found in Orsa whereas Henoticus serratus was found in both regions.
To conclude, prescribed burning of clear-cuts only had a short-lived positive effect on
saproxylic beetle diversity. This result casts doubt on the value of using prescribed burning of
clear-cuts as a conservation measure. The better effect of prescribed burning in Orsa than in
Långshyttan points to a differential effect of the value of prescribed burning. It also indicates
that a long period of restoration burning might be needed in many parts of Sweden in order to
increase the populations of fire-associated species.
Chapter 2 - Community assembly is the trajectory exhibited over time regarding species
composition and community structure as species colonize an empty patch. Chase (2007)
distinguish two basic types of assembly where a niche-assembled community is constrained
by species interactions and competitive hierarchies whereas a dispersal-assembled community
is unaffected by competition. The first wood-living (saproxylic) beetles to colonize a dead
tree are sub-cortical, cambial-living species with a larval development-time of one year or
less. Important community assembly events could therefore take place the first summer after
tree death.
Community assembly was studied during the eight weeks immediately after tree death.
By exposing 0.5 m long stem sections (bolts) of Norway spruce, Picea abies, to colonization
for increasingly longer times (0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 weeks) a temporal sequence was created.
A total of 140 bolts at four forest sites in central Sweden were studied with six to eight
replicates per site. Two of the sites were old-growth forest and the other two were forest sites
subjected to burning right before the experiment started. The author used community ecology
measures to describe assembly patterns and emphasize findings that would have gone
unnoticed in an analysis confined to the 8-week final state.
In total 8802 beetles of 56 species were reared from the bolts. Two fire-dependent species
were found in burnt forest, this is noteworthy since unburnt bolts were used in both forest
types. The total number of emerged beetles per bolt was similar in the two forest types in
early assembly but later this density was higher in the old-growth forest. During assembly the
community-level carrying capacity was reached in old-growth forest but not in burnt forest.
During assembly, community evenness and taxonomic richness was higher in the burnt forest
than in old-growth forest but at eight weeks these community measures had converged.
The two forest types became more dissimilar regarding species composition as the
community assembly progressed. Old-growth forest also had a lower bolt-to-bolt variation in
species composition than burnt forest. Cambivores was the functional group that made up the
largest proportion of individuals in both forest types but the proportion was highest in old-
growth forest. The proportion fungivores was highest in burnt forest. The proportion
predators peaked early in both forest types and then decreased during assembly. In old-growth
forest, 74 % of the bolts were numerically dominated by the cambivorous scolytine
Dryocoetes autographus. In burnt forest only 33 % of the bolts were dominated by that
species. Furthermore, burnt forest also had fungivores as bolt dominants, for example the fire-
favoured corticarid Corticara rubripes, whereas old-growth forest bolts were always
dominated by cambivores.
In conclusion, the beetle assemblages in the two forest types followed different assembly
trajectories. The beetle assemblage in burnt forest conforms to a dispersal-assembled
