Ground beetle fauna (Coleoptera, Carabidae) of Mordovia State Nature Reserve (Russia)

Protected areas are organised in different climatic zones, which usually include typical ecosystems characteristic of certain climatic zones. In most cases, protected areas are biodiversity hotspots. These areas are benchmarks in terms of nature conservation and to determine their biological diversity is becoming an important task. It is important to investigate the carabid family of protected areas within the framework of understanding the overall biological diversity of these systems. In addition, ground beetles, as one of the largest groups of ground-based inhabitants, are indicators of the state of ecosystems and serve as markers of their well-being.

We present 2,969 new occurrence records comprising 226 species of Carabidae, belonging to eight subfamilies, from the Mordovia State Nature Reserve (central Russia). Ten species are listed for the first time for the Mordovia State Nature Reserve fauna after previous research: Cicindela maritima, Bembidion striatum, Dyschirius angustatus, Dyschirius arenosus, Notiophilus aestuans, Bembidion argenteolum, Bembidion velox, Bradycellus caucasicus, Cymindis angularis and Syntomus truncatellus, five of which were first recorded for the Republic of Mordovia (Egorov et al. 2020). Previously, this information was not published anywhere and we wanted to make it available to everyone by embedding it in the global database on biodiversity (GBIF).