Abstract
This study of the role the environment in the composition of the communities of carabid beetles was carried out in several types of forests at Obihiro and Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. In addition, we analysed the altitudinal distributions of two forest specialists, Damaster gehinii (Faimaire) and Procrustes kolbei Roeschke, which occur in six mountain forests on Hokkaido. At Obihiro, the forest specialist, P. kolbei was found at only one site in a large area of broadleaf forest. A redundancy analysis indicated that the carabid assemblages were significantly different in the different types of forest, and that two species, Leptocarabus arboreus arboreus (Lewis) and Leptocarabus opaculus opaculus (Putzeys), were associated with broadleaf forests. At Furano, a forest specialist D. gehinii and a forest generalist Cychrus morawitzi Gehin were mainly collected in natural broadleaf and mixed forests, whereas the percentage made up of L. o. opaculus was very high (80.8%) in natural broadleaf forest. Pterostichus thunbergii Morawitz made up the highest percentage of the species in the conifer plantations. In the six mountain forests, D. gehinii was scarce and mainly occurred at low altitudes; however, P. kolbei was relatively abundant and mainly recorded at middle to high altitudes. The management of the forests on Hokkaido needed to maintain the diversity and abundance of carabid beetles is discussed.
Highlights
Japan is a country where two-thirds of the land is covered by forest of which 40% consists of plantations mainly composed of cryptomeria and Japanese cypress (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2018)
We investigated the distribution of carabid beetles in three types of forests located at Furano in central Hokkaido, northern Japan: (1) natural broadleaf forest, (2) natural mixed forest and (3) conifer plantation (Table 1)
The species compositions recorded in the present study are similar to those previously reported on Hokkaido in broadleaf forests by Hori (2003) and conifer plantations by Kaizuka & Iwasa (2015)
Summary
Japan is a country where two-thirds of the land is covered by forest of which 40% consists of plantations mainly composed of cryptomeria and Japanese cypress (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2018). Carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) are diverse and abundant, have relatively well known ecologies and systematics and are easy to collect using pitfall traps (Eyre et al, 1996; Lövei & Sunderland, 1996; Niemelä et al., 2000; Werner & Raffa, 2000) They are sensitive to environmental factors and respond rapidly to habitat changes (Osawa et al, 2005; Shibuya et al, 2008, 2014), because they are poor at dispersing as they have vestigial hind wings (Niemelä, 1997; Duchesne et al, 1999; Yu et al, 2002, 2006). They are used as bio-indicators in investigations into the biodiversity in forests managed in different ways in Europe (Humphrey et al, 1999; Magura et al, 2000, 2001a; Koivula, 2002b; Finch, 2005; Lövei et al, 2006; Karen et al, 2008; Lange et al, 2014; Negro et al, 2014), Africa (Rainio & Niemelä, 2006), Central and North America (Klimaszewski et al, 2005; Ulyshen et al, 2006) and Japan (Fujita et al, 2008; Kaizuka & Iwasa, 2015)
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