Sex pheromones as a tool to overcome the Wallacean shortfall in conservation biology: a case of Elater ferrugineus Linnaeus, 1758 (Coleoptera: Elateridae)

• Published in: Journal of insect conservation Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 25 - 32
• Main Authors: Kadej, Marcin, Zając, Krzysztof, Ruta, Rafał, Gutowski, Jerzy M., Tarnawski, Dariusz, Smolis, Adrian, Olbrycht, Tomasz, Malkiewicz, Adam, Myśków, Ewelina, Larsson, Mattias C., Andersson, Fredrik, Hedenström, Erik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01-02-2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal Ecology; Animal populations; Biodiversity; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Central Europe; Coleoptera; Conservation biology; Conservation Biology/Ecology; Dispersal; Ecology; Ekologi; Elateridae; Entomology; Genetics; Insects; Kairomone; Life Sciences; Local population; New records; Original Paper; Pheromone; Pheromones; Poland; Saproxylic insects; Poland; Pheromone; Saproxylic insects; Kairomone; Central Europe; New records
• ISSN: 1366-638X; 1572-9753; 1572-9753
• DOI: 10.1007/s10841-014-9735-4

The “Wallacean shortfall”—lack of distributional information—is one of the main problems when trying to assess the threats to and planning conservation strategies for many invertebrate species. Based on published and unpublished records since 1840, as well as on our own field survey, we attempted to estimate if and to what extent the use of pheromone traps increased the detectability of a rare, saproxylic click beetle
Elater ferrugineus.
The significant increase in the number of records in 2011–2013 shows that the pheromone method made it much easier to detect the occurrence of the species. Advantages of the pheromone method are that it does not disturb the habitat, can be used by non-specialists, is less costly and less time-consuming, and thus providing a useful tool for conservation research (studying biology, ecology and genetics of local populations).