Impact of arable farming management on the biodiversity of Carabidae (Coleoptera)

The Carabidae (Coleoptera) are a useful tool for monitoring the effects of different types of control and theretofore it is important to highlight about their role as possible ecological indicators. We studied the composition of carabids in ecological and integrated farming, in three different crops in southern Slovakia. The ground beetles were caught using pitfall traps during a period of three years, from 2018 to 2020. 7 801 adult carabids belonging to 26 species were collected and recorded altogether. The number of species varied from 11 to 15 between traps. The distribution and number of individuals were positively influenced by ecological management with the amount of 4784 individuals, compared to integrated management, where 3017 individuals were obtained. The influence of the crops was in the following order: Triticum aestivum, Pisum sativum and Medicago sativa. In both farming systems, representatives of the Carabidae family were almost the same species. The most abundant species of the pooled number was Harpalus rufipes (from 61.16 to 88.08%). Brachinus crepitans also dominated (from 5.98 to 16.47%). Other species were Poecilus cupreus, Anchomenus dorsalis, Brachinus explodens. The species identity index according to Jaccard when comparing both farming types for the observed period reached 60.00%. The average comparison of the identity of dominance for the observed period of ecological vs integrated management represents 90.39%. The Shannon-Weaver diversity index for ecological farming was 0.9957 and 1.0184 for integrated farming.