At present, climate change significantly affects living organisms on the planet, leading to transformations in their niches, ranges and abundance. The aim of our work was to forecast the range of the representative of the large family Carabidae, famous for its indicative characters, richness and importance in soil communities. We used 19 bioclimatic variables of Bioclim according to our own data and the data of GBIF with the help of the MaxEnt program. We used 550 coordinates of ground beetle Pterostichus melanarius (Illiger, 1798) records. We distinguished the potential range the species studied and drew prognostic maps of the species’ distribution related to climate change according to four scenarios. Mean annual temperatures and the mean temperature in the warmest and the coldest quarters of the year were the major factors affecting spatial distribution of P. melanarius. Visualization of potential range according to RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5 and RCP 6.0 scenarios predicted range reduction by 2050 but its recovery by 2070. According to RCP 8.5 scenario, the range of the species studied will be significantly transformed: by 2070 the range will shift towards the north-west in the continental European states but to the northeast – in the coastal states. By 2070 almost all southern territories of Europe will become unsuitable for P. melanarius survival. The most visible changes will be the shift in range to the north in the eastern part of the European plain. The comfort conditions for P. melanarius decrease in mountain regions including the Alps, Carpathians, Caucasus and Urals. By 2070, the cenotic optimum significantly decreases on the Balkan Peninsula. Thus, a sharp reduction in Southern European and Mediterranean populations is predicted.

Using geodata technology, we conducted a bioclimatic modeling of the spatial distribution of the common palearctic ground beetle – Pterostichus oblongopunctatus (Fabricius, 1787). The range of comfort of the territories included in this species’ range was obtained. We used the data on 510 sampling points, obtained as a result of the authors’ field surveys and the data base of the GBIF global fund of biodiversity and 19 climatic parameters from the WorldClim open base and MaxEnt program. The results determined the factors which have the greatest impact on the current distribution of P. oblongopunctatus. The main climatic factors affecting the distribution of P. oblongopunctatus are average annual temperature, average 24-hour amplitude of temperature over each month, average temperature over the driest quarter, average temperature over the warmest quarter of the year, total of precipitations in the driest month of the year. We performed a prediction of possible change in the range by two scenarios (RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5) for 2050 and 2070. Using QGIS program, we estimated the areas of the species’ range, and compared them. According to the scenario RCP 2.6, by 2050, the range of the species will contract due to decrease in the territories with moderately continental climate, and by 2070, a restoration of the range would take place, for according to this scenario, the average annual temperature stabilizes. According to the scenario RCP 8.5, the range will contract by 2050 and will continue to decrease by 2070, for the concentration of CO2 continues to increase along with increase in average annual temperature. Climate changes can affect the life cycle of the beetle, its life expectancy and activity over the season. With changes in temperature, eggs and larvae of P. oblongopunctatus can be more vulnerable.

Ground beetles in multiple species vary greatly in the expression of the shape on sexual traits, resulting in a sexual shape dimorphism as a consequence of sexual selection differences. The present research focuses on the study of inter and intrasexual sexual shape dimorphism of two generalist genera of ground beetles Pterostichus and Carabus. Geometric morphometric methods were applied to five generalist species of ground beetles Carabus exaratus, C. granulatus, Pterostichus melanarius, P. niger, and P. oblongopunctatus and several multivariate analyses were applied for two different traits, abdomen and elytra. Three of the five species analyzed showed high levels of sex-based shape dimorphism. However, the most generalist species, P. melanarius and P. oblongopunctatus, did not evidence shape-based sexual dimorphism differentiation in both of the analyzed traits, as statistically confirmed based on the permutation of pairwise comparison of the Mahalanobis distances of a sex–species classifier. It is generally known that environmental stress in natural populations can affect the fitness expression, principally related to sexual fecundity, being that this pattern is more evident in non-generalist species. In our results, the contrary pattern was found, with the absence of sexual shape dimorphism for two of the three generalist species analyzed. On the other hand, the interspecies shape variation was clearly identified using principal component analysis of both of the analyzed traits. Finally, this research is the first to analyze the relationship between sexual shape dimorphism in Russian ground beetles, evidencing the lack of understanding of the mechanism underlying the sexual dimorphism, especially in species living in extreme environments.

The ground beetles Zabrus tenebrioides and Harpalus rufipes (Coleoptera, Carabidae) are two of the most prevalent pests of wheat and other grasses. This article presents current data on their distribution and the results of modelling the bioclimatic ranges of these species using the maximum entropy method. To improve the model, we used various RStudio packages including the R script “thin points 4-1-18.R” package spThin and the «Raster» RStudio package. We determined the climatic parameters that promote the dispersal of the species, as well as the optimum conditions for the growth of Z. tenebrioides and H. rufipes. Maps forecasting the distribution of the studied species were generated through the perspective of two climate scenarios: RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5. For the modelling, we utilised 435 geographic points of Z. tenebrioides occurrence and 653 points of H. rufipes occurrence. Both species have similar bioclimatic ranges, and the most favourable conditions for them are fields of grain crops. The most significant parameters influencing Z. tenebrioides are those of moisture, whereas H. rufipes is most sensitive to the temperature parameters. According to the generated climatic models for both species, a decrease in the areas of their ranges would occur in their eastern, more continental areas, with a slight shift towards the north.

The article presents the results of the analysis of the Carabid fauna of three cities: Grozny, Kemerovo, Kazan. It was established that communities of ground beetles clearly respond to varying degrees of recreation by changing the biotopic distribution and ecological structure: the emergence of super dominant species, a decrease in the abundance of zoophages, an increase in the share of stratobionts, and the presence of indicator species.