Conservation Strategies for Protecting Tiger Beetles and Their Habitats in the United States: Studies With Listed Species (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Cicindelidae)

Abstract

Tiger beetles are a popular, widely studied group of charismatic insects that are a flagship taxon for insect conservation. Five species are currently listed in the United States as Federally Endangered or Threatened, two others have recently been delisted, and many more are listed by individual states. To date, the status of some of these species has been improved or their decline slowed by various conservation strategies. In this article, we review the background and the recent conservation activities for all federally listed tiger beetle species. These species have lost much of their historic habitat and remain at risk because of continuing impacts from vegetation encroachment of native or invasive plants, water-level changes, and other human-related activities. Conservation efforts are limited because for most species there is little or no potential habitat remaining, even following restoration activities. Effective strategies have included long-term monitoring of population size and research activities, acquisition and protection of occupied sites, methods for controlling vegetation encroachment to improve habitat quality, and recent efforts with translocations using beetles from existing populations or from captive rearing. Because tiger beetle life histories are similar, successful management and research methods for any one species can be applicable to others. This presents an opportunity to coordinate taxon-level conservation for all U.S. species through cataloged information and conservation leadership

Holocene insect pioneer colonization of post-glacial dune sands exemplified by tiger beetle burrows

“…Tiger beetles have been described as a popular and charismatic group of insects to collect or study for a variety of reasons such as their colorful adult morphology, local or regional variation, as well as their importance to nature conservation and crop pest control (Knisley and Gwiazdowski, 2021; Pearson, 1988). Although they have a long history of being researched in disciplines like ecology, evolutionary biology, and biogeography, the scarcity of their fragile bodily remains as fossils results in a noticeable lack of information from a paleontological perspective, forcing many inferences about their history to rely on present-day distributions (Pearson, 1988).…”

Single Night Surveys of Moth Communities Can Serve as Ultra-Rapid Biodiversity Assessments

“…Tiger beetles (Cicindelidae) are a relatively small family of beetles, with 2900 species globally [32] and 120 in North America [33]. They are one of the most popular groups of insects, after butterflies and dragonflies [34], and are some of the most well-studied, non-pest arthropods. They have been studied as indicators of habitat quality, and were found to predict the biodiversity of a site, as well as the degree of degradation of tropical forests [35,36].…”