112
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares

      Publish your biodiversity research with us!

      Submit your article here.

      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

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

      research-article
      1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 2 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 12 , 14 , 15 , 1 , 16 , 2
      ZooKeys
      Pensoft Publishers
      Carabidae, ground beetle, systematics, biology, life history, rhythms, seed feeding, ant feeding, ectoparasitism, predation on amphibians, dispersal, pitfall trapping, statistics, population dynamics, long-term research, bioindicators, conservation, habitat management, landscape ecology

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Abstract

          Carabidologists do it all’ (Niemelä 1996a) is a phrase with which most European carabidologists are familiar. Indeed, during the last half a century, professional and amateur entomologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the basic biology of carabid beetles. The success of the field is in no small part due to regular European Carabidologists’ Meetings, which started in 1969 in Wijster, the Netherlands, with the 14th meeting again held in the Netherlands in 2009, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first meeting and 50 years of long-term research in the Dwingelderveld. This paper offers a subjective summary of some of the major developments in carabidology since the 1960s. Taxonomy of the family Carabidae is now reasonably established, and the application of modern taxonomic tools has brought up several surprises like elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Progress has been made on the ultimate and proximate factors of seasonality and timing of reproduction, which only exceptionally show non-seasonality. Triggers can be linked to evolutionary events and plausibly explained by the “taxon cycle” theory. Fairly little is still known about certain feeding preferences, including granivory and ants, as well as unique life history strategies, such as ectoparasitism and predation on higher taxa. The study of carabids has been instrumental in developing metapopulation theory (even if it was termed differently). Dispersal is one of the areas intensively studied, and results show an intricate interaction between walking and flying as the major mechanisms. The ecological study of carabids is still hampered by some unresolved questions about sampling and data evaluation. It is recognised that knowledge is uneven, especially concerning larvae and species in tropical areas. By their abundance and wide distribution, carabid beetles can be useful in population studies, bioindication, conservation biology and landscape ecology. Indeed, 40 years of carabidological research have provided so much data and insights, that among insects - and arguably most other terrestrial organisms - carabid beetles are one of the most worthwhile model groups for biological studies.

          Related collections

          Most cited references180

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Effect size, confidence interval and statistical significance: a practical guide for biologists.

          Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is the dominant statistical approach in biology, although it has many, frequently unappreciated, problems. Most importantly, NHST does not provide us with two crucial pieces of information: (1) the magnitude of an effect of interest, and (2) the precision of the estimate of the magnitude of that effect. All biologists should be ultimately interested in biological importance, which may be assessed using the magnitude of an effect, but not its statistical significance. Therefore, we advocate presentation of measures of the magnitude of effects (i.e. effect size statistics) and their confidence intervals (CIs) in all biological journals. Combined use of an effect size and its CIs enables one to assess the relationships within data more effectively than the use of p values, regardless of statistical significance. In addition, routine presentation of effect sizes will encourage researchers to view their results in the context of previous research and facilitate the incorporation of results into future meta-analysis, which has been increasingly used as the standard method of quantitative review in biology. In this article, we extensively discuss two dimensionless (and thus standardised) classes of effect size statistics: d statistics (standardised mean difference) and r statistics (correlation coefficient), because these can be calculated from almost all study designs and also because their calculations are essential for meta-analysis. However, our focus on these standardised effect size statistics does not mean unstandardised effect size statistics (e.g. mean difference and regression coefficient) are less important. We provide potential solutions for four main technical problems researchers may encounter when calculating effect size and CIs: (1) when covariates exist, (2) when bias in estimating effect size is possible, (3) when data have non-normal error structure and/or variances, and (4) when data are non-independent. Although interpretations of effect sizes are often difficult, we provide some pointers to help researchers. This paper serves both as a beginner's instruction manual and a stimulus for changing statistical practice for the better in the biological sciences.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Do not log-transform count data

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Ecology and behavior of ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae).

              The ground beetles from the speciose beetle family Carabidae and, since their emergence in the Tertiary, have populated all habitats except deserts. Our knowledge about carabids is biased toward species living in north-temperate regions. Most carabids are predatory, consume a wide range of food types, and experience food shortages in the field. Feeding on both plant and animal material and scavenging are probably more significant than currently acknowledged. The most important mortality sources are abiotic factors and predators; pathogens and parasites can be important for some developmental stages. Although competition among larvae and adults does occur, the importance of competition as a community organization is not proven. Carabids are abundant in agricultural fields all over the world and may be important natural enemies of agricultural pests.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Zookeys
                ZooKeys
                ZooKeys
                Pensoft Publishers
                1313-2989
                1313-2970
                2011
                20 May 2011
                : 100
                : 55-148
                Affiliations
                [1 ]University of Helsinki, Department of Environmental Sciences P.O. Box 65 (Biocenter 3, Viikinkaari 1), FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland
                [2 ]University of Calabria, Department of Ecology, Ponte Bucci, I-87036 Rende (CS), Italy
                [3 ]Università di Sassari, Dipartimento di Zoologia e Genetica Evoluzionistica, Via Muroni 25, I-07100 Sassari, Italy
                [4 ]Cemagref UR EFNO, ‘Forest Ecosystems’, Domaine des Barres, F-45290 Nogent-sur-Vernisson, France
                [5 ]RBINS, Entomology Department, Vautierstraat 29, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
                [6 ]Finnish Forest Research Institute, PO Box 18, FI-01301 Vantaa, Finland
                [7 ]Aarhus University, Faculty of Sciences & Technology, Flakkebjerg Research Centre, DK-4200 Slagelse, Denmark
                [8 ]Seeweg 10, D-23942 Groß Schwansee, Germany
                [9 ]European Invertebrate Survey – Nederland, P.O. Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
                [10 ]Meenser Weg 9, D-37124 Rosdorf/Atzenhausen, Germany
                [11 ]Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Department of Ecology, Kamycka 129, CZ-165 21 Prague 6 – Suchdol, Czech Republic
                [12 ]Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Laboratory of Evaluation and Assessment of Natural Resources, Nowoursynowska street 166, PL-02-787 Warsaw, Poland
                [13 ]University of Murcia, Zoology and Physical Anthropology, Facultad Veterinaria, Campus Espinardo E-30071 Murcia, Spain
                [14 ]University of Leon, Department of Biodiversity & Environmental Management, Area of Ecology, Campus de Vegazana s/n, E-24071 Leon, Spain
                [15 ]Loopkeverstichting (SFOC), Esdoorndreef 29, 6871 LK Renkum, The Netherlands
                [16 ]Stichting WBBS, Kanaaldijk 36, 9409 TV Loon, The Netherlands
                Author notes
                Corresponding author: D. Johan Kotze ( johan.kotze@ 123456helsinki.fi ).

                Academic editor: Lyubomir Penev

                Article
                10.3897/zookeys.100.1523
                3131012
                21738408
                69d3af0d-5aab-4f0b-ad15-87e96a255d7e
                D. Johan Kotze et al.

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 24 March 2011
                : 24 March 2011
                Categories
                Article

                Animal science & Zoology
                biology,dispersal,rhythms,long-term research,predation on amphibians,pitfall trapping,population dynamics,conservation,systematics,habitat management,life history,ectoparasitism,ground beetle,statistics,bioindicators,landscape ecology,ant feeding,carabidae,seed feeding

                Comments

                Comment on this article