"Global change biology of ground beetles: Insights from wingless species in mountains"

by  prof. dr. Thorsten Assmann

from Institute of Ecology, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany

Monday  30.05.2011 at 14.00

National Institut of Biology, Večna pot 111, 1000 Ljubljana.
Lecture hall B2.


Lecture will be held in English:

Significant changes in climate have been recorded for large parts of Europe during the last decades. The distribution ranges of some species reacted already to these environmental changes, and large-scaled future range predictions are available. Ground beetles, especially those of the genus Carabus, belong to the most differentiated terrestrial organisms in terms of genetic variation. Two examples from the Pyrenees and Central European mountains (Alps, low mountain ranges and the Carpathians) illustrate that the populations of the given species already reacted or will react on climate change in highly differentiated ways. Especially the different climate niches of genetically disjunct clusters at the intraspecific level lead to more realistic predictions for future distribution ranges when disjunctively distributed Carabus species are considered. These data are used to prove the usefulness of climate niche models which deal with the overall distribution range and we discuss the results in the light of recent scientific debates on leading and rear edges of distribution ranges. Moreover our conclusion has clear implication for modern conservation biology of ground beetles.

Kindly invited!