Abstract
The tiger beetle fauna of the Maghreb region is one of the richest in the Palaearctic, including 22 species and 5 subspecies and 19% of all Palaearctic species of Cicindelinae. Assembled to their chorotypes, the Maghreb tiger beetles fall into eight different groups that include Maghreb endemics (26% of fauna), Mediterranean (7%), West Mediterranean (40%), North African (4%), Mediterranean-Westturanian (4%), West Palaearctic (4%), Afrotropico-Indo-Mediterranean (4%), and Saharian (11%) species. The Mediterranean Sclerophyl and Atlas Steppe are the Maghreb biogeographical provinces with the highest species richness, while the Sahara Desert has the lowest Cicindelinae diversity. Twenty-five cicindelid species and subspecies (93% of Maghreb fauna) are restricted to only one or two habitat types in lowland areas. Only Calomera littoralis littoralis and Lophyra flexuosa flexuosa are recognized as eurytopic species and occur in three types of habitat. The highest tiger beetle diversity characterizes salt marshes and river banks (in both cases 11 species and subspecies or 41% of Maghreb fauna). Approximately 85% of all Maghreb tiger beetle species and subspecies are found in habitats potentially endangered by human activity.
Highlights
Tiger beetles (Carabidae: Cicindelinae) include approximately 2600 species of small to medium-sized beetles (Pearson and Cassola 2005)
The basis for the analysis of tiger beetle fauna of the Maghreb region comes from published literature data, museum collections (Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw, Poland; Museum of Natural History, Vienna, Austria; Royal Belgium Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium), and the author's collections gathered during two scientific trips covering almost entire areas of Morocco and Tunisia (2nd and 4th TB-Quest Expeditions) in 2009 and 2010
All these faunistic data were summarized in two papers on tiger beetle species of Tunisia and Morocco (Jaskuła and Rewicz in prep., Jaskuła et al in prep.)
Summary
Tiger beetles (Carabidae: Cicindelinae) include approximately 2600 species of small to medium-sized beetles (Pearson and Cassola 2005). Tiger beetles have become a very important global flagship group for beetle and insect conservation, often used as biological indicators for determining both regional and global patterns of biodiversity (Knisley and Hill 1992; Pearson and Cassola 1992, 2005; Kitching 1996; Carroll and Pearson 1998a, 1998b; Andriamampianina et al 2000; Pearson and Vogler 2001; Arndt et al 2005; Jaskuła 2011) As both adults and larvae of cicindelid beetles are predators that prey on different small invertebrates, they can be used for biological control of pests causing important economic destruction (Rodriquez et al 1988)
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