From Phenology and Habitat Preferences to Climate Change: Importance of Citizen Science in Studying Insect Ecology in the Continental Scale with American Red Flat Bark Beetle, Cucujus clavipes, as a Model Species

Abstract

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.

Sizing up spotted lanternfly nymphs for instar determination and growth allometry

“…To further explore all of these issues going forward, we plan to create a citizen science project to encourage the collection of additional data, thus addressing the limitation that gathering data for SLFs over a wide range of geographic locations and other conditions is challenging for any single research group. Past citizen scientist projects have proved significant, cost-effective contributions to the study of insects (32) including invasive species (33–35), for early detection, surveillance and monitoring, determining range expansion, and community-based control efforts. Because the distinctive appearance of SLF makes their detection and identification feasible for nonexperts, these efforts include multiple ongoing initiatives aimed at mapping SLF distributions (36,37) containing and eradicating SLF populations (38), and determining which animals prey on SLFs (39).…”

Phylogenomic and mitogenomic data can accelerate inventorying of tropical beetles during the current biodiversity crisis

“…Therefore, we conducted intensive field research to obtain samples for a realistic assessment of the extant Metriorrhynchini diversity. We processed samples from our expeditions (most of which were focused on a range of topics over two decades between 2001 and 2019) and samples obtained through extensive collaboration with other researchers, both local and visiting, and with local naturalists whose contribution has increased with the growing number of citizen science projects ( Jaskula et al, 2021 ; MacPhail and Colla, 2020 ). In such a way, we assembled a Metriorrhynchini tissue collection from almost 700 localities in three continents ( Table 1 , Figure 1 ).…”

Phylogenomic and mitogenomic data can accelerate inventorying of tropical beetles during the current biodiversity crisis

“…The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted July 15, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.15.452170 doi: bioRxiv preprint diversity. We processed samples from our expeditions (most of which were focused on a range of topics over two decades between 2001 and 2019) and samples obtained through extensive collaboration with other researchers, both local and visiting, and with local naturalists whose contribution has increased with the growing number of citizen science projects (Jaskula et al, 2021;MacPhail, & Colla, 2020). In such a way we assembled a Metriorrhynchini tissue collection from almost 700 localities in three continents (Tab.…”