1. Semi-natural grasslands in Western Europe are degrading and declining. Their plant species diversity and associated fauna, such as arthropods, are decreasing fast making restoration crucial. 2. Carabid beetles are an essential link in ecosystem functioning (e.g., through herbivory and predation) and provide important ecosystem services (e.g., pest control). As a diverse group from different trophic levels, they occupy a variety of ecological niches, making them good indicators of restoration success and habitat quality. 3. To study how different aspects of carabid diversity change along a restoration gradient from degraded grasslands to restored semi-natural Nardus grasslands, we sampled carabid beetles in grasslands in Northern Belgium. We analysed differences in abundance, diversity and community composition and investigated carabid traits potentially influencing carabids’ response to grassland restoration. 4. Species richness did not change along the restoration gradient, but number of individuals decreased as grassland restoration time and effort increased and species composition changed, mostly caused by species turnover. As grassland restoration time and effort increased, carabid body size decreased and the proportion of dayactive carabids increased. Predators and habitat generalists were dominant along the entire gradient. 5. Even though the target vegetation was restored, the carabid communities were not, or at least, did not possess yet traits to be expected from a restored community. The landscape in Northern Belgium might be too fragmented for larger species with low dispersal ability to recolonize restored grasslands. However, restored speciesrich grasslands are beneficial for conservation of meadow birds as day-active beetles thriving in restored grasslands are an important food source
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
During the Eocene, world climate experienced rapid and intense global warming, reaching a peak during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 56 my ago. The warmest global climate of the past 66 my occurred during the early Eocene epoch (about 56 to 48 mya) when megathermal floral elements, including palms, reached Antarctica. The increase in temperatures led to a rise in sea level, turning Europe into an archipelago. Data regarding the early Eocene herpetofaunas are scant, but the locality of Dormaal in Belgium represents one of the rare exceptions. The lizards consist of gekkotans, acrodontan and pleurodontan iguanians, anguimorphs such as glyptosaurines and the varanid Saniwa. These groups are believed to be thermophilic, and their appearance in this high latitude locality indicates that the tropics were expanded during this time. Some of these records also represent first appearances of these clades in Europe. Among them, a new iguanian taxon is represented by a unique tooth morphology – the teeth are bifurcated – indicating a specialization on trophic resources. However, because terrestrial ecosystems changed substantially during the Palaeogene, this might have caused higher extinction risk relative to generalists (e.g., the iguanian Geiseltaliellus). Understanding this geological epoch is relevant for present global climate change, including sea level rise, as well as the expansion of distribution of thermophilic taxa, including parasites that cause serious infectious diseases such as malaria.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
