Soil and habitat preferences of ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in natural mountain landscape

The distribution of ground beetle assemblages along an elevation gradient in the Bieszczady National Park (East Carpathians) was investigated. A principal component analysis of the spatial patterns of ground beetle assemblages clearly differentiated groups of species from various elevation zones. Forward selection of explanatory variables in redundancy analysis also indicated that the majority of the variation of species can be described by elevation and presence of vegetation zones (beech wood and alpine meadow). The close relationship between the empirical species richness and those predicted from a mid-domain effect proved the fit to the geometric null model, explaining 73% of the species variance.