Recent records of steppe species in Belarus, first indications of a steppe species invasion?

Abstract

Belarus is situated at a crossroad of natural borders of species distributions: the NE part is situated in a taiga zone, whereas the other part of terrain is in the European forest zone. The distance of Belarus to the steppe zone is about 330 kilometers. This geographical position and the extensive knowledge of its fauna can be used to monitor changes in the distribution of different species. An intensive study of open habitat ground beetles was carried out from 1975–2008 in Belarus, using pitfall traps, quadrate-sampling methods, hand collecting, netting and light traps. In total, more than 130 000 specimens of ground beetles belonging to 169 species were collected from 62 fields and 11 meadows of different types. 217 specimens of Calosoma investigator (Illiger 1798), 2 specimens of C. denticolle (Gebler 1833), and one specimen of Harpalus subcylindricus (Dejean, 1829), H. honestus (Duftschmid 1812) and Zabrus tenebrioides (Goeze 1777) were present in this material. All specimens were macropterous and exclusively caught at fields and waste grounds on sandy soil. Nowadays Belarus is the northernmost location for these species in Eastern Europe. Steppe species most probably migrated to SE Belarus from NE Ukraine, using Dnieper and its river valleys. The shift in the geographic distribution of steppe species during the last thirty years in Belarus have been attributed to a higher frequency of warmer and wetter summers in the last few decades.