Ground beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera) at a restinga forest fragment in far-southern Brazil

Coleoptera is one of the most varied taxonomic groups, it has about 390,000 described species. Due to the wide variety and concentration of experts in a few groups, it becomes hard to carry out the inventory of Coleoptera fauna. This paper aims to contribute to knowledge on the diversity of beetles in restinga forests located in far-southern Brazil. The goal of this study was surveying the species of ground beetles sampled with pitfall traps, within the period from January 2011 to January 2012, as well as evaluating the group’s abundance, seasonality, and richness. A total of 6,954 ground beetles distributed into 25 families and 89 morphospecies were sampled. Out of these individuals, 63.79% belong to the Nitidulidae family; 14.83% to the Ptiliidae; and 6.82% to the Staphylinidae. Nineteen families had less than 1% of sampled individuals. Regarding the number of morphospecies per family, 29.21% belong to the Curculionidae; 14.61% to the Carabidae; 10.11% to the Chrysomelidae; 6.74% to the Nitidulidae; and 6.74% to the Scarabaeidae. In this research, two seasonal situations were observed, where the spring had the same number of species than summer and a larger number of sampled individuals.