PDFDOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/vzoo-2019-0001
We analysed the structure of the communities of the ground beetles of the tribe Carabini (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in urban environments on the examples of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Donetsk and Lviv. The ground beetles of this tribe in the five researched megapolises are represented by 24 species of the Calosoma and Carabus genera. The cities each have from 9 (Kharkiv, Donetsk) — 11 (Kyiv) to 14–15 (Dnipro, Lviv) registered species. Only three species (Carabus granulatus, C. cancellatus, C. convexus) turned out to be present in all the studied cities, where they were relatively abundant, and six (Calosoma auropunctatum, C. inquisitor, Carabus coriaceus, C. marginalis, Ñ. nemoralis, C. scabriusculus) were recorded reasonably frequently in most of the cities. In the parks of Kyiv and Lviv (south forest zone), forest (Carabus coriaceus, C. convexus, C. nemoralis) and polytopic species (C. ñancellatus) were dominant, while the inhabitants of open biotopes (Ñ. granulatus, C. excellens, C. scabriusculus) were uncommon. In Kharkiv (forest-steppe zone), the common species were both polytopic (Ñarabus granulatus, C. cancellatus) and forest (C. marginalis). In Donetsk and Dnipro (steppe zone), some steppe elements (Carabus estreicheri, C. perrini, C. sibiricus) occurred, but the dominant species were habitat generalist (Ñ. granulatus) and certain forest species (C. convexus). At the same time, almost half the recorded species of the tribe were registered as rare or accidental elements in the cities studied, though typical for the natural biocenoses of the geographic region surrounding those cities. A short ecological characteristic of all species of tribe in urbocenoses is given.