Staphylinidae

Perone, Paolo, Cerrato, Cristiana & Meregalli, Massimo, 2022, Saproxylic weevils and edaphic beetles as indicators of environmental quality of relict forests in Piedmont lowlands (Coleoptera), Fragmenta entomologica 54 (2), pp. 283-296 : 291

Larvae, Staphylinidae : Staphylininae , Staphylinidae : Pselaphinae

Rove beetles are reconfirmed to be the numerically most represented edaphic beetles that inhabit the forest litter ( Cano & Schuster 2009). Their abundance was higher in altered forest habitats, probably due to their higher heterogeneity. Environmental heterogeneity is considered one of the most important factors capable of governing abundance and species richness, particularly for not strictly stenoecious taxa, such as some generalist predators ( Tews et al. 2004; Vanbergen et al. 2007; Stein et al. 2014; Ortega et al. 2018).

The only exception is represented by Parco di Stupinigi , where an inverse situation was observed ( Fig. S1 ). This is probably due to the fact that the altered habitat of Stupinigi is a white pine plantation, a fully artificial environment. Therefore, an allochthonous component in an artificial environment (such as Stupinigi) has a heavy impact on its biocoenoses, whereas a marginal component in a more natural environment allows a structured edaphic community to be conserved. Moreover, the abundance of these predators in the Stupinigi areas, where no saproxylic weevils were found, highlights the different type of information that can be obtained from these taxa that usually have a good mobility and therefore can quite easily colonize new forested habitats, also reaching them from non-forested agroecosystems in the surroundings. Therefore, the edaphic and saproxylic beetle components must be analysed independently .

Figures

Fig. 1 –The collecting sites. Map data: Google Earth, Maxar Technologies, used according to Google Earth Terms of Service.