Habitat and Landform Types Drive the Distribution of Carabid Beetles at High Altitudes

Mauro Gobbi,Roberta Chirichella,Simone Ornaghi,Andrea Mustoni,Marco Armanini,Valeria Lencioni,Teresa Boscolo

doi:10.3390/d13040142

Abstract

The high altitude mountain slopes of the Dolomites (Italian Alps) are characterized by great habitat and landform heterogeneities. In this paper, we investigated the effect of Nature 2000 habitat and landform types in driving the high altitude ground beetle (Carabidae) distribution in the Western Dolomites (Brenta group, Italy). We studied the carabid assemblages collected in 55 sampling points distributed in four Nature 2000 habitat types and four landform types located between 1860 and 2890 m above sea level (a.s.l.). Twenty-two species, half of them Alpine endemics, were sampled. Species richness and taxonomic distinctness did not show any significant difference among habitat types; conversely, these differences became significant when the landform type was considered. Total activity density and the frequency of brachypterous, endemic and predatory species showed significant differences between both habitat and landform types. Indicator species analysis identified twelve species linked to a specific habitat type and thirteen species linked to a specific landform type. Canonical correspondence analysis showed that altitude and vegetation cover drove the species distribution in each habitat and landform type while the aspect had a weak effect. Our results highlight the need for a geomorphological characterization of the sampling points when high altitude ground-dwelling arthropods are investigated.

Highlights

High altitude areas experience high landscape complexity driven by the occurrence of different habitat types and by the different landforms on the mountain slopes that can increase the number of microhabitats available for colonization by plants and/or arthropods [1,2].Carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae), along with springtails (Collembola), spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) and myriapods (Chilopoda and Diplopoda) are among the most common and most studied ground-dwelling arthropods living at high altitudes [2,3,4,5]
We investigated the effect of Nature 2000 habitat and landform types in driving the high altitude ground beetle (Carabidae) distribution in the Western Dolomites (Brenta group, Italy)
The average species richness and taxonomic distinctness did not show any significant differences among habitat types; these differences became significant when the landform type was considered (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

High altitude areas experience high landscape complexity driven by the occurrence of different habitat types and by the different landforms on the mountain slopes that can increase the number of microhabitats available for colonization by plants and/or arthropods [1,2].Carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae), along with springtails (Collembola), spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) and myriapods (Chilopoda and Diplopoda) are among the most common and most studied ground-dwelling arthropods living at high altitudes [2,3,4,5]. High altitude areas experience high landscape complexity driven by the occurrence of different habitat types and by the different landforms on the mountain slopes that can increase the number of microhabitats available for colonization by plants and/or arthropods [1,2]. Information about the composition and distribution of species assemblages in the mosaic of habitat and rocky landform types available at a high altitude is still lacking for most of the mountain regions. This is probably due to the difficulties in reaching a few high altitude areas, in working under harsh environmental conditions and identifying in detail the different kind of landforms, in alpine fellfields. Our expectation is that recording both habitat and landform type will increase our understanding of carabid distribution in the mountains because landform diversity within each habitat type gives more detailed information about the availability of microhabitats determined by the geomorphological features of the slope

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