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.

1 Plantation forests and biodiversity: Oxymoron or opportunity? Forests form the natural vegetation over much of the Earth’s land, and they are critical for the survival of innumerable organisms. The ongoing loss of natural forests, which in some regions may have taken many millennia to develop, is one of the main reasons for the decline of biodiversity. Preventing the further destruction of forests and protecting species and ecosystems within forests have become central issues for environmental agencies, forest managers, and gove- ments. In this di?cult task science has an important role in informing policy and management as to how to go about this. So how do industrial and other pl- tation forests ?t into this? Plantation forests, comprised of rows of planted trees that may be destined for pulp or sawmills after only a few years of growth, appear to have little to c- tribute to the conservation of biodiversity. Yet there is more to this than meets the eye (of the casual observer), and there are indeed numerous opportunities, and often untapped potential, for biodiversity conservation in plantation forestry. With plantation forests expanding at a rate of approximately three million hectares per year, it is crucial to understand how plantations can make a positive contribution to biodiversity conservation and how the potentially negative impacts of this land use can be minimised. That is the topic of this book.

This handbook outlines the main methods and techniques, both modern and traditional, used to measure insect diversity. With the growing relevance of insect conservation in nature, this guide should assist students in understanding a complicated field.

Ground beetles (Carabidae, including tiger beetles, paussid beetles and bombardier beetles) are one of the most diverse insect families in Europe. This title provides an introduction to the biogeography and habitat types of Greece as well as ecological data of the carabid species.

This new edition of the Catalogue of Palaearctic Coleoptera gives a taxonomic overview of the most diverse group of all organisms living in the world-largest biogeographical area. The present volume is an updated edition of the first issue in 2003 but restricted to data published before the year 2000. It contains information about 33,914 taxa (together with synonyms), and increases the number of included species and other taxa by almost 5,000. In addition, thousands of species have their distributional data completed, and their ranks, systematic positions and nomenclature corrected. Almost two hundred new acts fix systematics and nomenclature, and numerous problems are discussed. Even such well known genera as Calosoma and Carabus, or tribes as Bembidiini and Panagaeini, are completely reorganized compared to the previously published catalogues. Thus, the work is a scaffold for biotic surveys, ecological studies, and nature conservation. It responds to the urgent need of an assessment of the still remaining forms of life, threatened by the on-going destruction of habitats. Taxonomy provides the basic building blocks of our understanding of the diversity of life. It stems from innate human curiosity: confronted with an unknown species we ask first “what is it”? Taxonomists recognize species and other systematic entities (taxa), define them and place them within the framework of known organisms, providing means for their subsequent identification. Contributors are: Antonio Tomás Tomas Andújar, Carmelo Fernández Andújar, Michael Balkenohl, Igor Belousov, Yves Bousquet, Boleslav Březina, Achille Casale, Hans Fery, Jan Farkač, Pier Mauro Giachino, Henri Goulet, Martin Häckel, Jiří Hájek, Oldřich Hovorka, Fritz Hieke, Jan Hrdlička, Charles Huber, Bernd Jaeger, Ilya Kabak, Boris M. Kataev, Erich Kirschenhofer, Tomáš Kopecký, Ivan Löbl, Werner Marggi, Andrey Matalin, Wendy Moore, Peter Nagel, Paolo Neri, Sergio Pérez González, Alexandr Putchkov, James A. Robertson, Joachim Schmidt, José Serrano, Luca Toledano, Uldis Valainis, Bernhard J. van Vondel, David W. Wrase, Juan M. Pérez Zaballos, Alexandr S. Zamotajlov.