Community and habitat analysis of predaceous diving beetles (Coleoptera: Dytiscidae) in central and western Mongolia

ABSTRACT

Physicochemical variables of aquatic environments are the main factors that influence aquatic organism distributions. In the present study, we aimed to assess the relationship between environmental variables and dytiscid assemblages in different aquatic basins of Mongolia. In total, 4193 diving beetle specimens of 66 species belonging to 15 genera were collected from 146 sites under various environmental and ecological conditions. Clear differences were observed in species richness and community composition among surveyed basins, subbasins, and habitat types. Environmental variables, particularly altitude and dissolved oxygen, exerted a strong influence on dytiscid communities in subbasins of the country. This large-scale study is the first to examine the relationship between dytiscids and their natural habitats in Mongolia at a species level, and it provides useful baseline information for future studies that aim to understand the factors that affect dytiscid communities.

KEYWORDS:

• community
• Dytiscidae
• Mongolia
• physicochemical variables
• water basin

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Jon Gelhaus (project leader), Dr. Balgan Namkhaidorj, and all members of “Selenge River basin” and “Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey (MAIS)” project for their help in collecting dytiscid specimens and sorting samples of water beetles. We thank Dr. Manfred Jäch, Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria, for the opportunity to work on dytiscid collections, and Dr. Helen Shaverdo, Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria, for help with identification and verification of some dytiscids. We are grateful to Dr. Ellen Chen, Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, USA, for valuable comments and suggestions and English corrections made in our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by US National Science Foundation under Grant #DEB-BSI 0206674, “Survey and Inventory of the Aquatic Macroinvertebrates of the Selenge River, Mongolia” and under Grant #DEB-BSI 0743732, “Survey and Inventory of the Aquatic Macroinvertebrates of the Altai and Hangai Mountains' Drainages, Mongolia”. BB was partially supported by the Taylor Family-Asia Foundation Endowed Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology.