Coleoptera in the Altai Mountains (Mongolia): species richness and community patterns along an ecological gradient

Abstract

The Altai Mountains located in western Mongolia comprise diverse habitats including forest, mountain steppe, dry steppe, semidesert, and desert. This study used advanced statistics to examine how diversity and species composition of beetle communities depend on vegetation pattern and environmental factors along an ecological gradient from steppe to desert. Our study included the beetle families Tenebrionidae, Carabidae, Curculionidae, and Coccinellidae, which account for the majority of the known beetle fauna in the area. The most abundant Coleoptera in all plots were Harpalus limbaris, Corsyra fusula, and Anatolica cellicola; otherwise, we caught a large number of rare species. The beta diversity of communities was correlated with distance between plots. Species richness of beetles was positively impacted by plant cover and correlated negatively with rising temperatures, whereas Shannon diversity of beetle communities was significantly higher in areas with higher precipitation. Distribution and community composition of Coleopterans were governed by environmental factors, especially plant diversity, mean annual temperature, and summer precipitation, as revealed by redundancy analysis.

Keywords

• arid environment
• beetles
• diversity pattern
• environmental factors
• species distribution