Assessing the shape plasticity between Russian biotopes in Pterostichus dilutipes (Motschulsky, 1844) (Coleoptera: Carabidae) a geometric morphometric approach

Abstract

Different biotopes or environments produce dissimilar stress level in insects, which can be reflected on the capacity of an individual to overcome these pressures and survive. Morphological plasticity of an organism is expressed by the ability of the species to produce different phenotypes depending on the environmental conditions. The following research evaluate the use of geometric morphometrics (GM) tool to evaluate the effect in the development of multiple phenotypes on a native beetle Pterostichus dilutipes Motschulsky, 1844 inhabiting different biotopes from the Baikal Lake coastal in Russia. GM results provided a powerful graphical visualization to detect small variation in morphology from beetles collected in an altitudinal gradient with a special plastic variation from warmer to colder biotopes. GM are very useful tool to future studies where the integration of research areas could allow researcher to identify with clarity of the morphological body plan product of natural selection.