• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.545-552
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• 2009

This study was conducted to provide basic information for development of habitat-based conservation strategies of biological diversity in agricultural ecosystem. The carabid beetle assemblages were examined at four kinds of habitats(levee, dike, forest patch remnants and streamside) from three differently stressed areas located in Paltan-myun, Hwaseong city, Korea: agricultural and forest area(site 1), industrial area(site 2), and residential area(site 3). Pitfall trap samplings were carried out 39 times from November 2000 to November 2002. Our study's findings were that the composition of carabid beetle fauna, dominance species, and pattern of carabid beetle assemblage were different among the habitats. The similarity index was highest between two levees in site 2 and 3, and lowest between hillock in site 2 and streamside in site 3, and that among habitats fragmented by road with high traffic was lower than that among any other habitat types. So, we could know that agricultural land use respectively do an important role in diversity conservation and networking. These findings will be used to establish the land use and management plans in the aspects of conservation of biodiversity.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.147-153
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• 2018

There are few available studies for insect diversity in relation to coastal dune despite the unique landscape features and high conservation value. Therefore, this study compared ground beetle assemblages inhabiting between windbreak forests and sand dunes in the Taeanhaean National Park. It investigated five windbreak forests and three coastal dunes using pitfall traps from middle of June to middle of October in 2014. A total of 2,335 ground beetles belonging to 30 species of 15 genera were collected. Synuchus arcuarticollis (158 individuals) and Dolichus halensis halensis (153 individuals) were dominant of 25 specifies collected from sand dunes while Synuchus arcuarticollis (1,630 individuals), Synuchus nitidus (130 individuals), and Synuchus cycloderus (42 individuals) were dominant of 14 species collected from windbreak forests. The similarity of ground beetles compositions in sand dunes and windbreak forests was significantly low at 27.4%. The results of this study showed that sand dune geographical features found in the Taeanhaean National Park had different insect assemblages from windbreak forests. It will be the useful information for conservation of insects in the future.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.125-131
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• 2017

The ground beetles collected during the investigation period were nine subfamilies, 24 genera, 51 species, and 3504 ground beetles. Species richness was high in Pterostichinae has 24 species (47%), Harpalinae nine species (17.6%), Carabinae six species (11.8%), and Lebiinae three species (5.9%). Overall dominant species was Synuchus agonus, and dominance index was 0.361. Synuchus agonus was investigated as the dominant species in both Namcheon Valley and Geumseon Valley. Regarding subdominant species, it was Synuchus nitidus (52 individuals, 12.6%) and Synuchus cycloderus (52 individuals, 12.6%) in the order in Namcheon Valley, and it was Pterostichus orientalis orientalis (660 individuals, 21.3%) and Pterostichus audax (378 individuals, 12.2%) in the order in Geumseon Valley. Total species diversity index of ground beetles in Sobaeksan National Park was 2.917. By area, the number of collected ground beetles was smaller in Namcheon Valley than in Geumseon Valley. Sobaeksan National Park is located at the boundary of northern and southern parts in Korea and is a very important place in terms of geography and climate. Sobaeksan has been designated as a national park, and its ecosystem is relatively preserved well. If continuous investigation of basic data for ground beetles is conducted through long-term monitoring, the data can be used as key data to research mutual relationship with organisms, effects by climate change, and ecosystem change depending on human activities.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.139-144
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• 2019

BACKGROUND: Epigeic arthropods participate in ecological functions as predators, decomposers and herbivores. The purpose of this study was to investigate the responses of some dominant arthropods in rice fields to different forms of agricultural land management. METHODS AND RESULTS: The abundance of microarthropods was compared between rice fields and uplands in the non-growing season. Collembola, Oribatida and Mesostigmata were more abundant in the upland fields than in the paddy fields. The community composition and diversity of epigeic arthropods were compared between fallow and rice fields. The total abundance and species richness of spiders and ground beetles were not significantly different in the two types of agricultural fields. The abundance of Arctosa kwangreungensis was greater in fallow fields than in cultivated fields. The community structure of arthropods was compared between paddy fields with and without barley. The cropping system altered the community composition of spiders but not their biodiversity. Barley cultivation increased the abundance of ground beetles but decreased that of spiders. We suggest that this contrast was partly due to the availability of plants that provided shelter and food for ground beetles. CONCLUSION: These results show that soil use intensity and cropping system alter the community composition of epigeic spiders and ground beetles. This could result in ecosystem-level alterations with respect to the control of pests and weeds. Our results also suggest that biodiversity of ground-dwelling arthropods may not increase during short fallow periods.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.82-89
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• 2024

This study aimed to investigate habitat distribution and beetle diversity, using beetles as biological indicator species to assess environmental changes in the Mt. Mangunsan area near the South Sea of Korea. Plots were installed at varying elevations on the southern and northern slopes of Mt. Mangunsan, and the beetle species composition was determined. A total of 1,368 beetles comprising 32 species belonging to ten families were collected between May and September 2023 from the study sites in the Mt. Mangunsan area near the South Sea of Korea. The two most prevalent species consisted of Synuchus nitidus, with 152 collected beetles, and Calosoma chinense, with 128 collected beetles. In May, June, July, August, and September, 76 beetles comprising 10 species, 180 beetles comprising 18 species, 138 beetles comprising 15 species, 525 beetles comprising 27 species, and 449 beetles comprising 25 species were collected, respectively, with the highest abundance observed in August. In terms of elevation, 239 beetles comprising 19 species were collected at 300 m; 352 beetles comprising 27 species at 400 m; 314 beetles comprising 24 species at 500 m; 280 beetles comprising 22 species at 600 m; 183 beetles comprising 16 species at 700 m. Based on the slope, 442 beetles comprising 18 species belonging to eight families were collected on the southern slope, and 926 beetles comprising 24 species belonging to 10 families were collected on the northern slope. Analysis of the beetles on the southern slope produced the following estimations: diversity of 1.086, evenness of 0.866, and dominance of 0.109. Meanwhile, those in the northern slope yielded a diversity of 1.204, evenness of 0.873, and dominance of 0.081.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.90 no.5
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• pp.632-642
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• 2001

Fauna, especially Carabidae (Coleoptera), on the floor of Pinus densiflora forests was investigated at five plantations and was compared with that in a mixed natural forest of pine and deciduous trees. There was little difference in the ground beetle fauna among the five P. densiflora plantations, and the bio-diversity of soil layer fauna was poor in all the pine plantations. Individual numbers of the beetles belonging to the genus Synuchus with increasing the infestation rate of the pine needle gall-midge (Thecodiplosis japonensis). These beetles seem to be important predators of the gall-midge. Comparing to the mixed forest, the number of higher taxa and the numbers of genera and species of Carabidae were all small in the pine forests. And especially, most flightless species were found only in the mixed forest. Thus, it is concluded that many species of Carabidae which had been lost from the lower mountainous areas of Korea have not recovered yet in the pine forests.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.307-317
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• 2011

Ground beetle fauna of Mt. Bangtaesan in Inje-gun, Gangwon-do was investigated from June to October in 2010. Ground beetles were collected by pitfall trapping. A total of 34 species of 18 genera belonging to 7 families were identified from 1,041 collected ground beetles. Species richness was high in Pterostichinae (15 species, 44.1%), Carabinae (7 species, 20.6%), Harpalinae (4 species, 11.8%), Nebriinae (3 species, 8.8%) and others (5 species, 14.7%). Dominant species were Synuchus spp. (260 individuals, 25.0%), Aulonocarabus semiopacus (218 individuals, 20.9%), and Pterostichus audax (205 individuals, 19.7%) in order. Korean endemic species were collected 564 individuals belonging to 10 species. By principal component analysis (PCA), species distribution and abundance of ground beetles were different depending on habitat characteristics of vegetation, surrounding environment and feeding habitat. Carabinae and Pterostichinae which live in the forest were preferred in hardwoods and coniferous in the Bangtansan Natural Recreation Forest, while Callistinae and Harpalinae were collected in forest adjacent to grasslands. Overall, differences of habitat environments within forest are important factors associated with distribution of ground beetles. This result will provide useful informations with establishment of conservation program and long-term monitoring against environmental change within mountain by using ground beetles.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.142-144
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• 2017

In recent decades, as it becomes increasingly important to monitor and research long-term ecological changes, worldwide attempts are being conducted to integrate and manage ecological data in a unified framework. Especially domestic ecological data in South Korea should be first standardized based on predefined common protocols for data integration, since they are often scattered over many different systems in various forms. Additionally, foreign ecological data should be converted into a proper unified format to be used along with domestic data for association studies. In this study, our interest is to integrate ECN data with Korean domestic ecological data under our unified framework. For this purpose, we employed our semi-automatic data conversion tool to standardize foreign data and utilized ground beetle (Carabidae) datasets collected from 12 different observatory sites of ECN. We believe that our attempt to convert domestic and foreign ecological data into a standardized format in a systematic way will be quite useful for data integration and association analysis in many ecological and environmental studies.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.185-198
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• 2016

Korea has put in significant efforts to increase the number of wildlife crossings between fragmented habitats to prevent loss of biodiversity and to encourage the habitat connectivity in Korea. However, there is a lack of biological data on the effect of vegetation structure in these wildlife crossings and guidelines for design and management of wildlife crossing structures in Korea. Therefore, we selected ground beetle assemblages as model organisms to compare the effect of vegetation structure in wildlife crossings, i.e. bare ground- and shrub-type corridors, in agro-forested landscapes. For this study, 4,207 ground beetles belonging to 33 species were collected through pitfall trapping along the northern forest-corridor-southern forest transects from late April to early September in 2015. Dominant species, abundance, and species richness of ground beetles were significantly higher in the shrub-type corridors than the bare ground-type corridors. Also, the species composition of bare ground-type corridor was significantly different compared to the other habitats such as shrub-type corridor and forests. Similarly, environmental variables were also influenced by vegetation management regimes or trap locations. Collectively, our study clearly indicates that the movement of forest associated ground beetles between forest patches can increase as the vegetation in wildlife crossings becomes complex. Although further studies are needed to verify this, there are indications that the current wildlife crossings that comply with the guidelines may be unfriendly to the movement of ground dwelling arthropods as well as ground beetles. To enhance the ecological function of wildlife crossings, the guidelines need to be rectified as follows: 1) Shrubs or trees should be planted along the corridor verges to provide refuge or movement paths for small mammals and ground dwelling arthropods, and 2) Open spaces should be provided in the middle of the corridors to be used as a path for the movement of large mammals.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.248-257
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• 2019

We chose the Mt. Dalum area (located in Gijang-gun, Busan, Korea) for our survey, particularly The pine wilt disease zone and the non-permanent control area. This study investigates the effect of pine wilt disease on the distribution of beetle species in the process of ecosystem change due to insect control; pine forests treated for pine wilt disease were divided into insect control and non-control sites, respectively. The results of this study are as follows. Twen tyseven species belongs to 12 families were identified from 969 ground beetles collected from this sites. Species richness was the highest in Coleoptera (6 species, 469 individuals). In the control site, 21 species belongs to 10 families were identified from 228 individuals, while 24 species of 11 families from 533 individuals in the non-control area. The highest number of species were noted in June and July from the non- control and control sites, respectively. The highest number of insects in control and non-control sites was observed in July, while the lowest in September. Sipalinus gigas gigas, Spondylis buprestoides, Plesiophthalmus davidis, Calosoma maximowiczi, Damaster jankowskii jankowskii, and Damaster smaragdinus were captured in both study sites. Episomustur ntus and Glischrochilus ipsoides were only captured in the control site, while Macrodorcas rectus rectus and Pheropsophus javanus were only captured in the non-control site. Six beetles and five species (such as Calosoma maximowiczi) were found in the control site and six species (including Damaster smaragdinus) in the non-control site. The species distributions by altitude were 163, 518, and 258 individuals, at 100, 200 and 300 m sites, respectively. The diversity, evenness, and dominance indices in the control area were 0.764, 0.812, and 0.367, respectively. The diversity, evenness, and dominance indices in the non-control area were 0.927, 0.837, and 0.352, respectively. The similarity index between the control and non-control area was 80%.