Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 62(1): 61-79, doi: 10.3897/travaux.62.e38591
Monitoring of the saproxylic beetle Morimus asper funereus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) in Măcin Mountains National Park, Romania
Minodora Manu‡, Raluca Ioana Băncilă§, Nicolae Lotrean|, Denisa Badiu¶, Roxana Nicoară‡, Marilena Onete‡, Florian Bodescu#‡ Romanian Academy, Institute of Biology Bucharest, Department of Ecology, Taxonomy and Nature Conservation, Bucharest, Romania§ Romanian Academy, “Emil Racoviţă” Institute of Speleology, Department of Biospeleology and Soil Edaphobiology, Bucharest, Romania| Argeş County Museum, Pitesti, Romania¶ University of Bucharest, Centre for Environmental Research and Impact Studies, Bucharest, Romania# Multidimension S.R.L., Bucharest, Romania
Corresponding author: Minodora Manu ( minodoramanu@gmail.com ) © Minodora Manu, Raluca Ioana Băncilă, Nicolae Lotrean, Denisa Badiu, Roxana Nicoară, Marilena Onete, Florian Bodescu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Manu M, Băncilă RI, Lotrean N, Badiu D, Nicoară R, Onete M, Bodescu F (2019) Monitoring of the saproxylic beetle Morimus asper funereus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) in Măcin Mountains National Park, Romania. Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 62(1): 61-79. https://doi.org/10.3897/travaux.62.e38591 |  |
Abstract
During 2014 and 2015, the species Morimus asper funereus Mulsant, 1862 was monitored in the Măcin Mountains National Park, Romania using the visual transect method. The studied was focused on two topics: to determine the numerical abundance of Morimus asper funereus populations and to identify the environmental variables which influenced them. Ten abiotic factors were analysed: altitude (A), exposition (Ex.), slope (S.a), forest coverage (F.c.), air temperature (A.t.), soil temperature (S.t.), air relative humidity (A.h.), cloud-cover (Nb.), wind speed (W.s.) and wind direction (W.d.). During the study period, 112 individuals were identified. The most favourable habitats for this species were Moesian silver lime woods (91Z0) and Pannonian-Balkanic Turkey oak – sessile oak forests (91M0). The main environmental variables that influenced the beetle population dynamics were the forest coverage and wind direction. Taking into account these two parameters, we concluded that Morimus asper funereus preferred semi-shaded and semi-open habitats, characteristic of mature, old, deciduous forests within the Măcin Mountains National Park. In order to protect this species, special attention must be given to the forest management measures, e.g. protection of fallen trees, abundant coarse woody debris and a dense canopy.
Keywords
Morimus asper funereus, environment, habitat, monitoring, transect