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Research article2015Peer reviewedOpen access

Sex pheromones as a tool to overcome the Wallacean shortfall in conservation biology: a case of Elater ferrugineus Linnaeus, 1758 (Coleoptera: Elateridae)

Kadej, Marcin; Larsson, Mattias; Hedenström, Erik

Abstract

The "Wallacean shortfall"aEuro"lack of distributional information-is one of the main problems when trying to assess the threats to and planning conservation strategies for many invertebrate species. Based on published and unpublished records since 1840, as well as on our own field survey, we attempted to estimate if and to what extent the use of pheromone traps increased the detectability of a rare, saproxylic click beetle Elater ferrugineus. The significant increase in the number of records in 2011-2013 shows that the pheromone method made it much easier to detect the occurrence of the species. Advantages of the pheromone method are that it does not disturb the habitat, can be used by non-specialists, is less costly and less time-consuming, and thus providing a useful tool for conservation research (studying biology, ecology and genetics of local populations).

Keywords

Pheromone; Kairomone; Saproxylic insects; New records; Central Europe; Poland

Published in

Journal of Insect Conservation
2015, Volume: 19, number: 1, pages: 25-32
Publisher: SPRINGER

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Ecology

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-014-9735-4

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/66767