The dataset comprises 81000 records of beetles from Britain and Ireland recorded to the end of 2016. The great majority of records are of water beetles, and site lists of these species are the most complete. Most of the rest are of rove beetles, marsh beetles and ground beetles collected from wetland margins. Over 99% of records were generated by the fieldwork of Bob Merritt. The remainder were collected by other parties, with the IDs being determined or confirmed by him.

Behavioral data for eight strains of red flour beetles in three behavioral assays and two commercial lures. The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), is a major pest of facilities where grain is processed because of its ability to find and colonize food resource patches. Traps baited with pheromone and kairomone lures are commonly used to monitor for the presence of insects in warehouses or flour mills, for example. However, two nonmutually exclusive components, environment and genetics, could influence insect responsiveness to volatiles, impacting the efficacy of monitoring. Intraspecific variation in attraction behavior to food and mates is largely unexplored in stored-product insects, but tapping into natural genetic variation could provide a baseline for identifying genetic mechanisms associated with finding resources. Here, we assess eight strains of T. castaneum for variation in response to kairomone- and pheromone-based lures using three behavioral assays: paired choice with no forced air flow, upwind attraction with forced air flow, and movement pattern in an arena with a single odor source. We find strain-specific responses to kairomones and pheromones and evidence for heritability in behavioral responses. However, environmental coefficients for behavioral responses to both lures are high, suggesting that environment, and its potential interaction with genotype, strongly influences behavioral outcomes in these assays. Furthermore, despite the different environmental conditions among the different behavioral assays, we find a correlation for volatile preference among the assays. Our results provide a baseline assessment of natural variation for preference to kairomone and pheromone lures and suggest that careful consideration of behavioral assay is key to understanding the mechanisms of attraction in these stored-product pests.

The Derek Lott Coleoptera dataset comprises 61366 records collated by Derek Lott into the Stenus Research Coleoptera Database. Stenus Research is an entomological consultancy set up by Derek Lott in 2004. It inherited a large number of beetle records amassed by Derek Lott since 1982. To these were added records collected during projects carried out on behalf of a variety of government agencies and charities. This database contains all those records from Britain and Ireland that were either collected or identified by Derek.

Description:

Data on beetle body length, trophic level, and biomass derived from body length measurements.

Project: This dataset was collected as part of the following SAFE research project: Spatial scaling of beetle community diversity

XML metadata: GEMINI compliant metadata for this dataset is available here

Files: This consists of 1 file: Vigus_beetles_data_FINALv2.xlsx

Vigus_beetles_data_FINALv2.xlsx

This file contains dataset metadata and 1 data tables:

1. Beetle community data (described in worksheet Vigus_beetles_data)

   Description: Data on beetle taxonomy, individual body length, trophic level, and biomass derived from body length measurements. Aboveground biomass data at trap sites. Family-specific allometric equations used to convert body length to biomass. Not all the families measured had a specific equation so a general Coleoptera equation was used in these cases.

   Number of fields: 13

   Number of data rows: 9534

   Fields:

   • Date: Calendar date (Field type: date)
   • Trap ID: Identity of trap (Field type: location)
   • Unique ID: Unique identity number of individual - relates to label numbers on specimens (Field type: id)
   • Highest taxonomic identity: Taxonomic identity to highest possible (Field type: taxa)
   • Highest taxonomic level: Highest taxonomic level beetles identified to (Field type: id)
   • TL1: Trait level one (Field type: categorical trait)
   • TL2: Trait level two (Field type: categorical trait)
   • Certainty: Certainty values of trophic levels for different taxonomic groups were assigned using a numerical value of a to e (Field type: ordered categorical)
   • Trap Detailed: More specific trap identity (Field type: id)
   • Length: Body length measured from the frons to the tip of the abdomen (Field type: numeric trait)
   • a: Coefficients for allometric equation M=exp(b+a*Log(L)) (Field type: numeric)
   • b: Coefficients for allometric equation M=exp(b+a*Log(L)) (Field type: numeric)
   • Mass: Biomass of individual as determined by formula (Field type: numeric)

Date range: 2011-02-21 to 2015-07-31

Latitudinal extent: 4.6350 to 4.7716

Longitudinal extent: 116.9474 to 117.7031

Taxonomic coverage:
All taxon names are validated against the GBIF backbone taxonomy. If a dataset uses a synonym, the accepted usage is shown followed by the dataset usage in brackets. Taxa that cannot be validated, including new species and other unknown taxa, morphospecies, functional groups and taxonomic levels not used in the GBIF backbone are shown in square brackets.

Adephaga UCE Raw sequence reads

John Sahlberg (1845-1920) was a Finnish entomologist who described a large number species, in particular Coleoptera and Hemiptera. His collection is now part of the insect collection of the Finnish Museum of Natural History. This resource contains type specimens of Coleoptera described by John Sahlberg in the turn of 20th century.

With over 380,000 described species and possibly several million more yet unnamed, beetles represent the most biodiverse animal order. Recent phylogenomic studies have arrived at considerably incongruent topologies and widely varying estimates of divergence dates for major beetle clades. Here we use a dataset of 68 single-copy nuclear protein coding genes sampling 129 out of the 196 recognized extant families as well as the first comprehensive set of fully-justified fossil calibrations to recover a refined timescale of beetle evolution. Using phylogenetic methods that counter the effects of compositional and rate heterogeneity we recover a topology congruent with morphological studies, which we use, combined with other recent phylogenomic studies, to propose several formal changes in the classification of Coleoptera.

Intensification of anthropogenic land use is a major threat to biodiversity and thus to essential ecosystem services provided by insects. Rove beetles (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), which react sensitively to habitat changes, are species-rich colonizers of vertebrate cadavers and contribute to the important ecosystem service of carrion decomposition. The unveiling of anthropogenic and environmental drivers that modify carrion-associated rove beetle communities should improve our understanding of the plasticity of cadaver decay. We report the presence of 80 rove beetle species on 65 decomposing piglet cadavers at forest sites characterized by a gradient of management intensity across three geographic regions in Germany. Local and landscape drivers were revealed that shape beetle abundance, diversity, and community composition. Forest management and regions affect rove beetle abundance, whereas diversity is influenced by local habitat parameters (soil pH, litter cover) and regions. The community composition of rove beetles changes with management intensification by promoting generalist species. Regarding single species, Philonthus decorus and Anotylus mutator are linked to unmanaged forests and Ontholestes tessellatus to highly used forest stands. The spatial information provided about carrion-associated rove beetle communities in German forests is not only of carrion-ecological but also of forensic entomological interest.

This dataset consists of beetle (Coleoptera) specimens collected from the QCAS Asian project to understand insect diversity along latitude and elevation in Yunnan Province, China. This data set includes beetles collected using four standardized sampling protocols using Pitfall traps, Malaise traps, Litter extraction (processed using Burlese-Tullgren funnels), and Bark spray from Lijiang, China, during 9-22 August 2012. Sampling was conducted along an elevational transect divided into four elevational bands separated by approximately 200 m vertical intervals (ranging from 800 to 1400 m a.s.l ). Five 20 m by 20 m plots were deployed in each elevational band, at least 150m away from each other. Properties were carefully located to avoid areas with any signs of disturbances (i.e., canopy gaps) and to maintain similar aspects and slopes where possible. The community data acquired through this project was aimed to go beyond reporting occurrence by understanding beetle responses for increasing elevation in tropical forests.

An online database of the described immature beetles from Brazil is presented for the first time based on published literature.

Carabcat is a global database of ground beetles (Insecta Coleoptera Trachypachidae and Carabidae sensu lato, including Rhysodinae and Cicindelinae) curated by Wolfgang Lorenz

Kauri forest represents a major ecosystem in northern New Zealand; however, the invertebrate fauna and their ecological diversity in these forests is very poorly known. This article investigates the composition and diversity of beetle communities in two kauri forest remnants, sampled by pitfall traps each month for one year. In total 4777 beetles were caught, representing 28 families, 84 genera and 107 species. Estimates of species richness indicate there were 173 species at both sites combined. The five most abundant species contributed 71%, and the top 10 species contributed 88% of all beetles caught. The abundance, richness and composition of the beetle community were consistent throughout the year. Patterns of niche overlap also show that the same set of species co-occur throughout the year, rather than temporal partitioning of the environment on an annual time scale. This data suggests that seasonality plays a limited role in explaining the composition and diversity of beetle communities in kauri forest.

Supplementary data to the research article:

Phylogenomic analyses clarify the pattern of evolution of Adephaga (Coleoptera) and highlight phylogenetic artefacts due to model misspecification and excessive data trimming

Authors:

Alexandros Vasilikopoulos, Michael Balke, Sandra Kukowka, James M. Pflug, Sebastian Martin, Karen Meusemann, Lars Hendrich, Christoph Mayer, David R. Maddison, Oliver Niehuis, Rolf G. Beutel, Bernhard Misof

The following directories are included:

01.Ortholog_set Description: Ortholog set used for bait design in this study (the format is intended for use in the software package Orthograph)

02.Bait_sequences DescriptionThis folder includes (a) the file with the bait nucleotide sequences, (b) a dictionary of the gene IDs of Tribolium castaneum and corresponding OrthoDB IDs of genes used for target enrichment and (c) a file with the IDs of the targeted exons (based on annotation of T. castaneum v. 5.2 in the form GENEID_X_Y, where X: the number of exon targeted and Y: the total number of exons for that gene)

03.Clean_assemblies_hybrid_enrichment_data Description: Assemblies of the hybrid-enrichment genomic data after removal of putative cross-contaminations

04.Alignments_before_Aliscore Description: Amino-acid and nucleotide alignments before trimming with Aliscore

05.Supermatrices Description: All inferred and analyzed supermatrices

06.Treefiles_supermatrices Description: All phylogenetic trees inferred from analyses of supermatrices (best trees for maximum likelihood analyses)

07.Filtered_datasets_coalescent_analyses Description: All analyzed amino-acid alignments used in summary coalescent phylogenetic analyses (filtered alignments)

08.Gene trees_non-collapsed Description: All inferred gene trees used as input in summary coalescent analyses (before collapsing weakly supported nodes)

09.Treefiles_coalescent_analyses Description: All inferred species trees resulted from summary coalescent phylogenetic analyses

10.Custom_scripts Description: Custom scripts used in the study

This dataset contains the digitized treatments in Plazi based on the original journal article Duran, Daniel P., Chambers, Aaron W., Nelson, Kristie N., Roman, Stephen J. (2023): A new species of tiger beetle (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae) from the Death Valley ecosystem. Zootaxa 5293 (1): 179-184, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5293.1.9, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5293.1.9

Aim

To investigate the role of traits in beetle community assembly and test for consistency in these effects among several bioclimatic regions. We asked (1) whether traits predicted species' responses to environmental gradients (i.e., their niches), (2) whether these same traits could predict co-occurrence patterns, and (3) how consistent were niches and the role of traits among study regions.

Location

Boreal forests in Norway and Finland, temperate forests in Germany.

Methods

We complied capture records of 468 wood-living beetle species from the three regions, along with nine morphological and ecological traits. Eight climatic and forest covariates were also collected. We used Bayesian hierarchical joint species distribution models to estimate the influence of traits and phylogeny on species' niches. We also tested for correlations between species associations and trait similarity. Finally, we compared species niches and the effects of traits among study regions.

Results

Traits explained some of the variability in species' niches, but their effects differed among study regions. However, substantial phylogenetic signal in species niches implies that unmeasured but phylogenetically structured traits have a stronger effect. Degree of trait similarity was correlated with species associations but depended idiosyncratically on the trait and region. Species niches were much more consistent – widespread taxa often responded similarly to an environmental gradient among regions.

Main conclusions

The inconsistent effects of traits among regions limits their current use in understanding beetle community assembly. Phylogenetic signal in niches, however, implies that better predictive traits can eventually be identified. Consistency of species niches among regions means niches may remain relatively stable under future climate and land use changes; this lends credibility to predictive distribution models based on future climate projections but may imply that species' scope for short-term adaptation is limited.

This is a curated dataset containing over 26,000 digitized specimen records from the California Channel Islands belonging to the order Coleoptera (beetles). The live dataset is managed in the data portal 'Ecdysis' and can be accessed here: https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 Subsets of records for each of the 8 individual Channel Islands can be found here: San Clemente - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=2 San Nicolas - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=3 Santa Catalina - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=4 Santa Barbara - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=5 San Miguel - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=6 Santa Rosa - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=7 Santa Cruz - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=8 Anacapa - https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/ecdysis/collections/list.php?datasetid=9

Published as part of Atkinson, Thomas H., 2024, New species, new synonymy, taxonomic notes and new records of bark and ambrosia beetles from the southwestern United States and northern Mexico (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Platypodinae and Scolytinae), pp. 151-175 in Zootaxa 5424 (2) on page 155, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5424.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/10821033 FIGURE 3. Chaeotophloeus heterodoxus. Male: (A) Dorsal, (B) Lateral, (C) Frontal, (D) Posterior. Female: (E) Dorsal, (F) Lateral, (G) Frontal, (H) Posterior. Specimen data: Mexico: Baja California, Col. Lázaro Cárdenas, 10 km W, 31.3573 N, 115.8275 W, 846 m, 11-XI-2105, ex Prunus ilicifolia, T.H. Atkinson (UTIC). All photographs by the author.

This dataset contains the digitized treatments in Plazi based on the original journal article Pérez-Hernández, Cisteil Xinum (2017): An annotated catalogue of the Coleoptera types deposited in the National Insect Collection (CNIN) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Zootaxa 4288 (1): 1-128, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4288.1.1

Data for Tihelka et al. "Mastigocoleidae fam. nov., a New Mesozoic Beetles Family and the Early Evolution of Dryopoidea (Coleoptera)"

Beetles (Coleoptera) are often among the most abundant and diverse insects that feed on sporocarps of macrofungi, but little is known regarding their relative specialism or generalism in most communities. We surveyed >9000 sporocarps in montane hardwood forest in the Appalachian Mountains (USA) to characterize associations of mycophagous beetles and macrofungi. We used traditional metrics and network analyses to quantify relationships between sporocarp traits (mass, age, persistence, and toughness) and assemblages of adult beetles, drawing from >50 000 beetles collected over two survey years. Strict-sense specificity was rare in these associations: most beetle species were found on multiple fungal genera, and most fungi hosted multiple beetle species. Sporocarp age and fresh mass were positively associated with beetle diversity in fungi with ephemeral sporocarps (here including 12 genera of Agaricales and Russulales), but sporocarp persistence was not. In Polyporales, beetle diversity was greater in softer sporocarps than in tough or woody sporocarps. The increase of beetle diversity in aging sporocarps could not be attributed to increases in sporocarp mass or sampling point in the growing season, suggesting that age-related changes in chemistry or structure may support increasingly diverse beetle communities. Interaction networks differed as a function of sporocarp age, revealing that community-wide measures of generalism (i.e., network connectance) and evenness (i.e., variance in normalized degree) change as sporocarps mature and senesce. Beetles observed on Agaricales and Russulales with more persistent sporocarps had narrower interaction breadth (i.e., were more host-specific) than those on less persistent sporocarps, and beetles on Polyporales with tougher sporocarps had narrower interaction breadth than those on soft sporocarps. In addition to providing a large-scale evaluation of sporocarp use by adult beetles in this temperate biodiversity hot spot, this study shows that characteristics of food organisms are associated with specialism and generalism in interactions relevant to fungal and forest ecology.