Carabid beetles of the environs of Lake Elton: fauna, population dynamics, demography.

Abstract

The present paper includes the results of a year-round pitfall trapping survey of ground beetles in the region of Lake Elton, Volgograd Area, Russia. The main objectives of the project lie in studying the local fauna of Carabidae in the Lake Elton region, as well as their demographic structure and dispersal potential of the local populations of particular carabid species. A total of ten model habitats: six zonal (characteristic of that particular biogeographic area) and four azonal (present in a variety of biogeographical areas) were studied. In each model habitat, ten pitfall traps were set from 10 May 2006 until 10 May 2007 and were checked at 10-day intervals except for the period with negative temperatures (from 1 November 2006 until 31 March 2007). During the period of observation, 51,314 specimens of Carabidae, belonging to 149 species, were trapped. The resulting sampling-event dataset includes 24,291 plot-based observations (= sampling events), some of them containing zero records of particular species in a certain habitat and time. This is the first sampling-event dataset of a year-round pitfall trapping survey (from May 2006 until May 2007) of ground-beetle communities and the demographic structure of local populations of particular species in the Lake Elton region, Volgograd Area, Russia.