The Carabidae form one of the largest and best studied families of insects, occurring in nearly every terrestrial habitat. The contributions included in this book cover a broad spectrum of recent research into this beetle family, with an emphasis on various aspects of ecology and evolution. They deal both with individual carabid species, for example in studies on population and reproductive biology or life history in general, and with ground beetle communities, as exemplified in papers treating assemblages in natural habitats, on agricultural land and in forests. Disciplines range from biogeography and faunistics, over morphology, taxonomy and phylogenetics, ecophysiology and functional ecology, to population, community, conservation and landscape ecology. This volume is the result of the 8th European Carabidologists' Meeting, 2nd International Symposium of Carabidology, September 1-4, 1992, Belgium.

Abstract: Litter-dwelling beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) assemblages were monitored for two years (2001 and 2002) after the construction of a corridor in 2000 for the installation of a pipeline along a xeric ridgetop forest in unglaciated southeastern Ohio. After the creation of the corridor, there were three distinct habitats on the study site: open corridor, forest interior, and ecotone. Carabid beetles were collected in directional pitfall traps, which were placed along north-south and east-west directions in each of the three habitats. An ANOVA on the 2001 sampling data indicated that carabids were aggregated primarily in the ecotone, whereas the numbers of specimens collected from the forest interior and corridor were similar. Carabid diversity, estimated by rarefaction, was highest in the corridor, and there was no significant difference in diversity between the ecotone and the forest interior. The forest interior and ecotone assemblages were dominated by Synuchus impunctatus (Say) and Carabus goryi (Dejean), whereas the corridor assemblage was dominated by Harpalus pensylvanicus (DeGeer) and Selenophorus opalinus (LeConte). Directional pitfall trap orientation had no significant effect on the number of carabids collected. An NMS (non-metric multidimensional scaling) ordination of the 2001 data indicated that the carabid assemblages in the corridor were distinct from those of the ecotone and forest interior, whereas the latter two habitats had very similar carabid assemblages. Therefore, the successional pathway of the corridor carabid assemblage will likely be different from those of the forest interior and ecotone. Limited comparisons of the 2001 and 2002 data indicate that generalist species, which may out-compete forest specialist species, became more abundant in the corridor and ecotone after one year of succession. Overall, results indicate that the construction of the pipeline corridor had significant short-term effects on the number of carabids collected, as well as on carabid diversity and species composition due to habitat changes and fragmentation of the forest stand.

With the removal and destruction of natural areas for human use, there is a push to restore natural habitats. However, most restoration activities focus on reestablishing plant communities, while less is known about the recovery of organisms in higher trophic levels and their functional roles. Considering functional traits (those that explain an organisms' response to environmental change and impacts on ecosystems) of restored communities may reveal how communities, and the ecosystem functions they drive, recover. Of particular interest are ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) because of their diversity and important ecological roles as consumers. This study focused on the ground beetle community's taxonomic and functional responses to time since restoration, presence of bison, and prescribed fire to make predictions of how ground beetles influence restoration outcomes in tallgrass prairie. Specifically, the functional responses of interest were seed and arthropod predation. FDiv and FDis, two measures of functional diversity, were negatively affected by prescribed fire and presence of bison, but older restored sites had higher FDiv and FDis values. Predation rates, related to ecosystem functioning, also declined with recent fire. Older sites also had a higher activity density (abundance) of ground beetles, and bison created particularly favorable habitat for carnivorous and flightless species. While there was no clear pattern of how site age or bison impacted the ground beetle community, prescribed fire tended to reduce functional diversity and predatory function. Therefore, land managers should consider the timeframe between prescribed burns in order to allow the ground beetle community to reestablish, if the goal is to increase ground beetle community diversity and functional diversity.

With the increasing numbers of research workers and groups of investigators devoting themselves to the ecology of carabids I felt that the time had come to take stock of the existing knowledge in this field and to endeavour to weld my personal results and those of other workers into a comprehensive picture. It was with these aims in mind that the following study was conceived. A further goal was to attempt to show to what extent research on carabids can contribute to the larger fields of research encompassing ecology, ethology and evolution. In my opinion the investigations on carabids permit us to draw conclusions of general applicability and, as such, comparable with those made in recent years upon other groups of animals. I am well aware of the risk involved nowadays in attempting, on one's own, to integrate results from a wide variety of scientific disciplines into a meaningful whole, and for this reason I am always grateful for corrections and for additional information. It is impossible for me to mention by name all of the col leagues who have given me their support in the preparation of the book. Reprints of their publications have been placed at my disposal by almost all of the authors cited, as well as by others whose names and works have been omitted merely in order to prevent the book from taking on encyclopedic pro portions. I am nevertheless indebted to them all for their cooperation.

Ecological sustainability is a priority in the management of Ontario's northern hardwood forests. It is important to assess harvesting impacts, as well as the likelihood of recovery prior to the next harvest. In this thesis, I use carabid communities as indicators of forest management in sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) dominated stands in Central Ontario to compare different partial harvesting systems within a recently cut experimental forest, as well as between old-growth and mature logged stands. Greater basal area removal resulted in greater deviations in carabid communities from uncut conditions among experimental treatments, while communities were similar between old-growth and mature logged sites, despite strong difference in forest structure. These findings suggest that pre-harvest conditions may sufficiently recover between partial harvests to support ecological sustainability over time. However, the ability to recover may depend on initial logging intensity and harvesting rotation length.