Niche partitioning among species with virtually the same requirements is a fundamental concept in ecology. Nevertheless, some authors suggest that niches have little involvement in structuring communities. This study was done in the Pardubice Region (Czech Republic) on saproxylic beetles with morphologically similar larvae and very specific requirements, which are related to their obligatory dependence on dead wood material: Cucujus cinnaberinus, Pyrochroa coccinea, and Schizotus pectinicornis. This work was performed on 232 dead wood pieces at the landscape scale over six years. Based on the factors studied, the relationships among these species indicated that their co-occurrence based on species presence and absence was low, which indicated niche partitioning. However, based on analyses of habitat requirements and species composition using observed species abundances, there was no strong evidence for niche partitioning at either studied habitat levels, the tree and the microhabitat. The most likely reasons for the lack of strong niche partitioning were that dead wood is a rich resource and co-occurrence of saproxylic community was not driven by resource competition. This might be consistent with the theory that biodiversity could be controlled by the neutral drift of species abundance. Nevertheless, niche partitioning could be ongoing, meaning that the expanding C. cinnaberinus may have an advantage over the pyrochroids and could dominate in the long term.

• MeSH
• Biodiversity MeSH
• Coleoptera classification   physiology   MeSH
• Wood * MeSH
• Species Specificity MeSH
• Ecosystem * MeSH
• Larva physiology   MeSH
• Forests MeSH
• Trees MeSH
• Animals MeSH
• Check Tag
• Animals MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Geographicals
• Czech Republic MeSH

The American red flat bark beetle, Cucujus clavipes, is a wide distributed saproxylic species divided into two subspecies: ssp. clavipes restricted to eastern regions of North America and ssp. puniceus occurring only in western regions of this continent. Unique morphological features, including body shape and body coloration, make this species easy to recognize even for amateurs. Surprisingly, except some studies focused on physiological adaptations of the species, the ecology of C. clavipes was almost unstudied. Based on over 500 records collected by citizen scientists and deposited in the iNaturalist data base, we studied phenological activity of adult beetles, habitat preferences and impact of future climate change for both subspecies separately. The results clearly show that spp. clavipes and ssp. puniceus can be characterized by differences in phenology and macrohabitat preferences, and their ranges do not overlap at any point. Spp. clavipes is found as more opportunistic taxon occurring in different forests as well as in urban and agricultural areas with tree vegetation always in elevations below 500 m, while elevational distribution of ssp. puniceus covers areas up to 2300 m, and the beetle was observed mainly in forested areas. Moreover, we expect that climate warming will have negative influence on both subspecies with the possible loss of proper niches at level even up to 47-70% of their actual ranges during next few decades. As the species is actually recognized as unthreatened and always co-occurs with many other species, we suggest, because of its expected future habitat loss, to pay more attention to conservationists for possible negative changes in saproxylic insects and/or forest fauna in North America. In addition, as our results clearly show that both subspecies of C. clavipes differ ecologically, which strongly supports earlier significant morphological and physiological differences noted between them, we suggest that their taxonomical status should be verified by molecular data, because very probably they represent separate species.

• Keywords
• Canada, Coleoptera, Cucujidae, North America, USA, citizen scientific data, habitat loss, iNaturalist, macrohabitat preferences, phenological activity,
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH