1999 Symposium

2nd GLOBENET Meeting

Barziya, Bulgaria, 22-26 April 1999

Symposium participants - click on faces to see participant details

Programme - Friday (23 April 1999)

 TIME ACTIVITY
 9.00 - 9.30  Coming together at the Central Laboratory of General Ecology
 9.30 - 12.00  Excursion to the Sofia GLOBENET sites
 12.00 - 14.00  Departure to Barziya
 14.00 - 15.00  Lunch
 15.00 - 19.00  A short excursion through the vicinity of Barziya combined with free discussion
 19.30 -  Dinner (which may be heavy)

Saturday (24 April 1999)

 TIME SPEAKER TITLE
 8.30 - 9.00 Breakfast  
 9.00 - 9.30 Lyubomir Penev Opening the workshop
 9.30 - 10.00 Jari Niemelä Introduction to GLOBENET
 10.00 - 10.30 Johan Kotze & Steven Venn Ground beetle (Coleoptera, Carabidae) assemblage changes across an urban-to-rural gradient in Helsinki, Finland
 10.30 - 10.45 Coffee break  
 10.45 - 11.15 Dustin Hartley, Enrique Montes de Oca & John Spence Ground beetles in aspen forests on an urban-rural gradient: land use and introduced species |abstract|
 11.15 - 11.45 Jonathan Sadler Carabids in urban spaces - Biodiversity in urban habitat fragments |abstract|
 11.45 - 13.00 Free discussion  
 13.00 - 14.00 Lunch  
 14.00 - 14.30 Ivailo Stoyanov & Lyubomir Penev Changes of species composition and biodiversity in ground-beetle assemblages along urban-rural gradients in Sofia, Bulgaria |abstract|
 14.30 - 15.00 Enrique Montes de Oca Beetle fauna response to land use mosaics along an altitudinal gradient in Central Veracruz, Mexico |abstract|
 15.00 - 17.00 Discussion - joint paper  
 18.00 Visit Klissura Monastery  
 19.00 Dinner  

 

Abstracts

 Dustin Hartley, Enrique Montes de Oca & John Spence
Carabid assemblages were studied in aspen forests around Edmonton, Canada using the Globenet prescription. Four replicated trap-lines were monitored during the summer of 1998 at each of four points along a gradient of land use intensity: 1) the interior urban area of the City of Edmonton (c. 750 000 human inhabitants); 2) suburban areas within 1-2 kms of developed residential or business areas; and 3) rural areas including a National Park, a provincial grazing reserve and undeveloped private land adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary. About 15 000 carabids were collected and identified. Whether or not 4 introduced European species (Carabus granulatus, C. nemoralis, Clivina fossor and Pterostichus melanarius) are included in the analyses profoundly affects the results. Without the introduced species there is a weak trend towards greater diversity in the rural sites, driven mainly by the absence of a number of rare species. With the introduced species included, two strong relationships emerge in the data: 1) overall activity-abundance of carabids is much higher in the urban areas than on the rural traplines; and 2) urban assemblages are significantly less diverse and less even than those from rural areas. Patterns of wing dimorphism was studied in two species. For a native species, Agonum retractum, proportion of LW individuals was less than 10% did not vary across the gradient. For the introduced species, P. melanarius, proportion of LW individuals varied between 4% and >80% and was significantly higher towards the rural end of the gradient. Thus, the effects of introduced species on the fauna can be expected to spread outward from the urban core.

TOP-1999

Jonathan Sadler 
The talk will introduce the NERC (Natural Environmental Research Council) URGENT programme and outline the preliminary results from the first year of sampling Carabidae in the built-up environment of Birmingham in the West Midlands. The first survey examined 27 sites of different characteristics (i.e. woodland, wetland, post-industrial land, mesotrophic grasslands and scrublands) using a stratified sampling framework aimed at evaluating the status of carabids in the con-urbation. Initial results of this work will be outlined along with a discussion of next year's work. The results of a small scale GLOBENET survey of woodlands will also be discussed.

TOP-1999

 Ivailo L. Stoyanov & Lyubomir Penev
Two urban-rural gradients with three sampling sites per gradient were sampled. About 3 000 ground-beetles, belonging to 59 species were collected. The carabid assemblages are analyzed using routine techniques of community ecology. The data support the existence of recognizable urban-rural gradients across Sofia City. The properties of the so established gradients seem to be: 1) Urban sites posses the most high diversity; 2) The most low diversity is concentrated in the suburban sites probably due to instabilities occurring in such transitional stages, and 3) Urban sites are strongly species-enriched by the invasion of eurytopic ground-beetle species and the diversity increases over the normal level reached in natural habitats. 

TOP-1999

 Enrique d. Montes de Oca Torres
I shall study dung beetle (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) and ground beetle (Coleoptera, Carabidae) assemblages in series of mosaics of land use patches along an altitudinal gradient. My aim is to analyze processes determining community organization and diversity at different spatial and temporal scales and taking in account the anthropogenic effects. Different types of anthropogenic land use patterns are found along the altitudinal gradient. Along a transect about 20 km length I will sample at four or five sites distributed in a 500-3500 m asl. altitudinal range. In each of these sites there are villages settlings that have transformed the natural surroundings with a mosaic of patches of different use. Patches of old growth natural vegetation remain interspersed in this mosaic of land use. Effects on diversity and assemblage composition of the two groups of beetles produced around these small and semi urbanized villages shall be assessed. Implications of these effects on the determinants of species diversity along the altitudinal gradient shall be identified. Additionally, it is worthwile to compare the anthropogenic effects on natural landscape occurring in the villages along the gradient with those produced around the larger and urbanized center core as the city of Xalapa, located at about 25 km from the starting point of the transect.

TOP-1999

 Ivailo Dedov & Lyubomir Penev
In the course of 3-years collecting efforts in Sofia City, thirty-eight species of terrestrial snails have been established. In this paper one species - Aegopinella nitens (Michaud 1831) is recorded for the first time from Bulgaria. Based on data on the species' distribution within both the city and Bulgaria, as well as for their ecological preferences and zoogeographical characteristics, the snails have been grouped in four categories, reflecting the consequent stages in the formation of the urban fauna.

TOP-1999

 Nickolay Kodzhabashev & Lyubomir Penev
Seven habitat types around the Srebarna Natural Reserve have been sampled during 1988 and 1991-1993 by using 50 pitfall traps in each habitat type. As a result over 10 000 specimens belonging to 207 species were collected. The two classifications based on the Czekanovski- Sørensen Index resulted in two different dendrograms: the first classification of ground-beetle communities, based on presence/absence data, revealed 4 groups of habitats: 1) hydrophilous vegetation, 2) hygrophilous forests and wet meadows, 3) open dry habitats and oak forests, and 4) Tilia and Fraxinus forests; the second classification of ground-beetle communities, based on quantitative data, grouped the habitats otherwise: 1) hydrophilous vegetation, wet meadows and hygrophilous groves, 2) open dry habitats and oak forests, 3) waterside habitats and 4) Tilia and Fraxinus forests. The performed DCA led to the following conclusions: the first DCA axis clearly shows a gradient from open wet areas to forest habitats; the second DCA axis can be identified as a gradient between forest habitats on one hand and open grassy areas and meadows on the other. Thus the main factor determining the species composition of the carabid assemblages in Srebarna Natural Reserve is the soil moisture and not the habitat type.

TOP-1999

 

1998 Symposium

Global biodiversity and its Monitoring: focus on insects

Monday April 20th, lecture hall (zoology museum, P. Rautatiekatu 13, Helsinki)

Symposium participants - click on faces to see participant details

 

The Spatial Ecology Research Programme of the Division of Population Biology (University of Helsinki) in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment, Finnish Biodiversity Research Programme Coordination (FIBRE) and the Finnish Museum of Natural History presented the symposium 'Global Biodiversity and its Monitoring: focus on insects'.

The aim of the symposium was to present views and solutions to issues related to human-caused changes in biodiversity and their monitoring. The focus was on insects, especially on beetles, as their potential in monitoring is considerable but they have not received the attention needed. The symposium concluded a three day workshop to establish a Global Network for Monitoring Landscape Change using Carabid Beetles (GLOBENET).

For more information contact Johan Kotze or Jari Niemelä

Programme - Monday (20 April 1998)

 Time  Speaker  Title
 9.00 - 9.45 Pekka Kangas (Ministry of the Environment) Opening of the symposium
  Jari Niemelä (Univ. Helsinki) What is GLOBENET?
  Tor-Björn Larsson (Swedish Env. Protection Agency)  GLOBENET and EU
   Mari Walls (FIBRE, Turku)  What is FIBRE?
 9.45 - 10.25 Michael Samways (Univ. Natal, South Africa) Macroecology of carabids: a southern hemisphere perspective |abstract|
 10.25 - 11.15 break and press conference  
 11.15 - 11.55 Allan Ashworth (N. Dakota State Univ., USA) Response of beetles to global change in the past and in the future |abstract|
 11.55 - 12.35 John Spence (Univ. Alberta, Canada) Dancing the two-step of Eltonian homogenization: town and forest carabids of here and there |abstract|
 12.35 - 13.30 lunch  
 13.30 - 14.10 Tim New (La Trobe Univ., Australia)  Have beetles a role in monitoring programmes in Australia? |abstract|
 14.10 - 14.50 Lyubomir Penev (Central Lab. General Ecology, Bulgaria)  Parameters of carabid populations and assemblages used for monitoring: an attempt for a classification |abstract|
 14.50 - 15.10 break  
 15.10 - 15.50 Konjev Desender (R. Belgian Inst. Nat. Sci., Belgium) Prospects and problems in carabid monitoring
 15.50 - 16.30 Pietro Brandmayr (Univ. Calabria, Italy) Diversity of carabid beetles, butterflies and some vertebrate taxa in the Mediterranean landscape |abstract|
 16.30 - 17.10 Patricia Wright (State Univ., New York, USA) Longterm monitoring and the effects of human impact on the rainforests of Madagascar |abstract|
 18.00 - Wine reception hosted by the Finnish Museum of Natural History  

Abstracts

 Joan N.U. Jaganyi and Michael J. Samways
A study of carabids was undertaken in South Africa using the same methodology as has been used in the northern hemisphere. This macroecological study aimed at assessing changes in carabid communities across landscapes in a part of South Africa, and importantly, aimed at making direct comparisons with similar studies in the Palaearctic. As in the north, intensively disturbed biotopes were impoverished, and natural patches of moist forest acted as habitat sources for these disturbed sinks. Nevertheless, as in the north, roadside verges can be species-rich analogues of natural habitats. One contrary comparison, was that an orchard, in this case macademia, was exceptionally rich in carabid species and individuals. It is concluded that the macroecological approach has great potential for testing out local effects from global ones and can help conservation of biodiversity at both the small and large scales.

TOP-1998

 Tim R.New
Carabidae have played little part in the development of terrestrial monitoring programmes in Australia, and this reflects generally poor taxonomic and biological knowledge of a diverse fauna. Relevant information is reviewed, and the prospects for greater use of carabids in a variety of survey contexts explored. At present, other groups (such as ants) are utilised far more extensively in ecological interpretation and monitoring. This focus is duscussed in the context of the need for broader suite of focal taxonomic groups to explore changes along ecological gradients, the rationale of defining the optimal groups for such work, and the protocols for assessing their values in a consistent, comparative manner.

TOP-1998

 Lyubomir Penev
The proper choice of the indicatory parameters and their value is of key importance for the success of every monitoring programme. The present talk aims to make a brief overview of the parameters of both carabid populations and assemblages used for monitoring mainly in Western Europe and Russia. There exists an enormous amount of works devoted to the role of ground-beetles in bioindication and monitoring studies. Several parameters have been proved to be useful biomarkers, both at population and community level. In general, a successful global monitoring programme should incorporate both a) individualistic parameters, such as biological and population characteristics of certain species, species listings, biogeographical structure and son on, and b) typological parameters of the communities, such as biodiversity, body-size, range-size and life-form structure, trophic and ecological groups etc. Though the typological parameters should prevail in cases of comparative studies at global level, some individualistic reactions of the species to the environment can probably be extended to "general rules" independent of that which species they concern and on which continent they happen. It may also be expected, that comparing the carabid communities at global level we can design a well-defined "gradient" from faunistically similar (e.g. European sites) to less-similar (e.g. Finnish and Canadian sites) to completely different (e.g. European and Australian sites) carabid communities. Along such a "gradient", the role of individualistic parameters will decreaase on account of the typological ones. This gives us an exciting perspective to trace those parameters which are effective at different degrees of faunistic similarity, and opens an opportunity to approach the old, but still unresolved problem of biogeography: the role of ecological and faunistical (historical) factors in formation and functioning of the communities.

TOP-1998

 Allan Ashworth
Fossils of beetles preserved as heads, pronota and elytra in Pliocene, Pleistocene and Holocene sediments are an important resource from which the historical effects of climate change and human activities on insect faunas can be examined. During the Plio-Pleistocene transition at about 2 million years ago, a diverse beetle fauna inhabited Kap København, northernmost Greenland. The beetle fauna inhabited a forested landscape in contrast to the polar desert of today. A significantly warmer climate may also have existed in the interior of Antarctica until Pliocene time, based on a fossil assemblage which includes fossils of beetles. During the last 2 million years of the Quaternary Period, both the northern and southern hemispheres have undergone repeated glaciations in both polar and temperate latitudes. Beetle species have responded to these natural climate changes by tracking the changing climates. Even though populations were isolated, and the conditions theoretically conductive to speciation and extinction, only a few new species have been described and only a few species became extinct. Regional extinctions (extirpation) have been detected but these did not lead to species extinctions.
Human activities during the Holocene and within historical times have produced effects in the fossil record as striking as those of climate changes. In the British Isles and Europe, clearance of old growth forests, starting in Neolithic times about 5 000 years ago, led to the reduction in habitat and the extinction or restriction of several species of beetles. Much later in the mid-nineteenth century, the arrival of Europeans and their cultivation practices modified the insect fauna of the American Midwest so profoundly that it is as detectable by fossils as any ice age climate change.
Presently, some of the most at risk populations from the combined effects of human activities and global warming are those insect populations trapped in habitats as a result of past climate change; for example, populations of arctic-alpine species on mountain tops in the northeastern United States and Canada. Using IPCC estimates for amounts of future global warming, and local adiabatic lapse rates, the shrinkage of alpine habitats can be modeled and the amount of regional extinction of species estimated.

TOP-1998

 Patricia Wright, Warren Steiner & Pascan Rabeson
Longterm monitoring sites both inside pristine areas in Ranomafana National Park and more disturbed adjacent areas will give us a better indication of the effects of human impacts such as selective logging and slash and burn agriculture on the rain forests of Madagascar. The initial years of this study of biodiversity within Ranomafana National Park(1987-1993) were spent collecting and identifying taxa, and simultaneously training local residents to identify taxa and learn biodiversity methods. In 1993 fourteen monitoring sites throughout the 43,500 ha park were chosen; half of these sites in disturbed areas. The problems of analyzing and interpreting large data sets like these in Madagascar will be presented. An additional problem includes translating this long term monitoring information from the research biologist to the park management team.

TOP-1998

 John R Spence
In his classic book, The Ecology of Animal Invasions, Charles Elton envisioned the possibility of a great homogenization of the world's biota brought about through the action of anthropogenic forces. Two main forces are involved: 1) similar habitat and landscape simplification generated by human cultures across the globe in association with agriculture, forestry, mining and urbanization, and 2) introduction of exotic species in association with increased and more rapid intercontinental movement of
humans and their goods. Studies of the effects of both processes on carabid communities in North America and England will be reviewed in the context of developing clear objectives for biomonitoring on urban-rural gradients. The overall conclusions are that 1) the "two-step" must be partitioned if functional understanding is desired, in addition to pattern description, 2) that the gradient has important secondary axes, and 3) that clear linkage to both scientific hypothesis and applied conservation considerations should be built into biomonitoring from the start.

TOP-1998

 Pietro Brandmayr, T. Zetto & R. Pizzolotto
A complex mediterranean landscape has been sampled in Southern Italy, Calabria, by year samples of Carabid beetles along a 70 km transect (from the Thyrrhenian to the Jonian coast). A sector of this transect has been investigated on more taxa: butterflies, birds, small mammals, higher plants. A landscape ecoloy approach suggested to subdivide the landscape system in more ecotopes (landscape units, more or less equal to main geomorphic units).
The distribution and diversity of carabids in these units is very similar to that of plants, in the fiumara ("river" ecotope) the species number found is the highest, lower numbers have been found in the neighbouring forest ecotopes (hills) or in the clay soil anthropogenous landscape. Butterflies and birds show similar patterns, small mammals show a maximum of species in sclerophyllous forest of medium height hills. The species diversity loss of the lower clay hills, a fully deforested landscape unit, has been calculated on a new diversity measure, the"eta-diversity". For all the taxa studied the species loss varied between 28.9% and 36%

TOP-1998