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.
Highlights
A summary based on the 3rd International Carabidologists’ Meeting emphasised the role of dispersal in increasingly fragmented landscapes, and argued that much more knowledge on the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on carabid beetle population dynamics is needed if sensible decisions are to be made regarding conservation and land-use (Thacker 1996)
The integrative approach of combining morphology, molecular systematics, ethology, ecology, geographic distribution, etc., as well as the use of bioinformatics, is recognised as the best framework for solving the challenges still faced by carabidologists (Assmann et al 2008), and by animal taxonomists in general
What follows is a short overview of recent advances in carabid beetle systematics, concentrating on literature presented at European Carabidologists’ Meetings (ECMs) and the international congresses mentioned above
Summary
Modern disciplines in carabid beetle ecology, such as bioindication, conservation and habitat management, landscape ecology and urban ecology rely heavily on the work done by professional and amateur carabidologists from the more traditional fields of natural history, systematics and taxonomy. European maps: Du Chatenet 1986 (189 European species); Turin 2000 (380 Dutch species), Turin et al 2003 (Carabus: 135 species); Fauna Europea: http://www.faunaeur.org ogy and periodicity (Larsson 1939), agroecology (Holland 2002), biogeography (Ball 1985; Noonan et al 1992), dispersal ecology (Palmén 1944; Den Boer 1977; Baars 1982; Desender 1989b; Aukema 1995), morphology (Sharova 1981; Deuve 1993) and phylogeny (Ball et al 1998) This listing is not exhaustive, especially in the fields of genetics and molecular biology, which are growing rapidly. The participants visited the permanent sampling plots in the Dwingelderveld and Mantingerveld, started 50 years earlier
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