Documentation of canopy beetle diversity
Summary:Tropical beetles (Coleoptera) are of particular interest in studies aiming to link biodiversity and ecosystem functions due to the huge contrasts in feeding behavior among the taxonomic families comprising this order. Beetles as a whole consist of a variety of feeding guilds, with exclusive predators (e.g. Staphylinidae) and exclusive herbivores (e.g. Chrysomelidae) on either end of the spectrum. In the framework of EFForTS Z02 WP3, we have collected more than 25.000 beetle individuals during two canopy fogging campaigns in dry season 2013 and rainy season 2013/14. As beetles are very diverse (more than 400.000 recognized species from more than 170 families), we focus on the four most numerous beetle families in our samples,
i.e. Chrysomelidae, Curculionidae, Elateridae and Staphylinidae. The aim of the proposed scholarship is to catalogue and document the (morpho-) species of those four families in a comprehensive was. Specifically, we aim to obtain high resolution digital imagery of all morphospecies identified so far, and upload images and metadata to existing platforms in the EFForTS framework, i.e. EFForTS-IS and the Ecotaxonomy.org database.