Volume VI, no. 1, Spring 1999Table of Contents
Ohio Coleopterists to take on more at Deep
Woods -
Dave Horn
Ohio Coleopterists to Take on More at Deep WoodsFor those of you who came in late, Deep Woods Community is a 280 acre tract in Hocking County quite close to Ash Cave and Cedar Falls State Parks. Deep Woods has substantial natural relief with sandstone outcrops, waterfalls, and steep terrain leading to a variety of natural communities representative of most those the Hocking Hills have to offer. The East Fork of Queer Creek cuts transects the property (as does the Marathon-Ashland oil pipeline). Mature forest ranges from cool hemlock-beech-maple in ravines to oak-hickory on dry sites. There is a variety of early-successional habitats as well. In 1998 an All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) was commenced with joint support from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Biological Survey. My lab associates initiated blacklight, pitfall, and Malaise trap sampling of terrestrial habitats at Deep Woods last summer, and Brian Armitage of OBS has been surveying aquatic insects. We of the O.C. visited the site in July and September. The ATBI is continuing in 1999 resulting in a growing baseline of species that can be utilized to assess impact of environmental changes such as pipeline construction and beaver dams. The Ohio Coleopterists have been invited by OBS to assume command of the beetle survey portion of the ATBI, and we will discuss this at our meeting in May (and continue the discussion at Deep Woods, I hope). - Dave Horn Beavers and BeetlesThe family Leptinidae is an interesting group of beetles as they are ectoparasites on rodents and several insectivores (N. M. Downie & R. H. Arnett, 1966). I am always up for a challenge when it comes to collecting beetles. I set my sights on Platypsyllus castoris (The Beaver Parasite Beetle) as an obtainable species if I could secure the obvious host! I contacted a buddy of mine who runs a nuisance animal trapping business in Perry County to keep me informed if he had any jobs removing unwanted beavers. I received a call on January 5, 1998 and was told "I got three beavers on my back porch ... come get your beetles" and with that I grabbed the killing jar, a pair of forceps and went to collect my beetles. All three beavers had beetles on them and I collected a long series of these small (avg. 2.0mm) testaceous, odd-looking beetles. If anyone is interested in obtaining specimens of Platypsyllus castoris, I would be happy to trade for any interesting goodies you may have, particularly Carabidae or Cerambycidae. I plan to attend the OC meeting in May so please contact me and I will bring some with me then. If anyone has a story describing the collection of this beetle from a live host ... please let me know! - Ken Karns
Ohio Beetle Survey UpdateBack in 1993 the O.C. made a fitful start in developing a statewide inventory of beetle groups in which we had expertise and interest. (If you want to know who was involved, check O.C. vol. II no. 1.) We went so far as to develop a data form and to assign family coordinators for the effort. Since then, various individuals have accumulated enviable information of statewide occurrence within their groups, especially Bob Androw (Cerambycidae), Kip Will (Carabidae), Barry Valentine (Anthribidae) and George Keeney (Silphidae). Coordinated efforts languished a bit due partly to languishing of our organization, and to delay in decisions regarding the appropriate databasing format. We are now in a better position to resume efforts to survey selected beetles of Ohio. Our renaissance as a formal organization allows us to apply for funding to speed databasing and production of reports. What I would like to see eventually is a series of reports like the excellent surveys on butterflies and moths published by the Ohio Lepidopterists and the Ohio Biological Survey. I think we have the necessary expertise and enthusiasm within our organization, and it could give us focus and visibility. We can discuss this at our May meeting and beyond. (The deadline for Ohio Wildlife Diversity Grants has been in November.) The following article gives a hint of what we can do. - Dave Horn Survey of Ohio SilphidaeSince 1992 we have been pitfall trapping here and there throughout Ohio in an unsuccessful search for remnant populations of the American Burying Beetle. Some of this effort has been funded by ODNR, some by public utilities, some by the U. S. Forest Service, and some by ourselves. To date we have accumulated the results of over 80,000 trap-nights. Along the way we agreed to prepare a modest publication on Silphidae of Ohio for the Ohio Biological Survey, and we received a small grant for travel to museums to seek additional distributional data. We have reviewed the silphid holdings of collections at The Ohio State University, Ohio University, the Dayton Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Museum, Miami University, and Muskingum University. This effort has provided a good amount of data on geographic and seasonal distribution of Silphidae within Ohio although coverage remains incomplete; for example, of 88 Ohio counties, 33 are unrepresented by a single specimen, clearly reflecting a lack of collecting effort. Identification of gaps in knowledge is one of the values of such a study, and filling in these gaps is precisely what our membership can do. With this issue we include some of our silphid records as an example of what could result as O.C. members survey many other beetle families of Ohio. The maps were generated by an old-fashioned style (i.e. a person with a marking pen) and constitute our present state of knowledge regarding the distribution of Silphidae county by county. Records are clustered in counties (Ashtabula, Athens, Ottawa, Hocking, Vinton, Scioto, Lawrence. Butler, Clinton) where coleopterists reside or have favorite collecting sites. We present this information partly to invite any additions you may wish to share. An eventual publication (Dare we say "Ohio Coleopterists’ Research Paper # 1"?) will contain a short discussion on the biology of each species, and comments on distribution and abundance. For now, the following comments accompany the distribution maps: Nicrophorus americanus. This is the federally endangered American burying beetle, for which there are rather few specimens documented from Ohio. All records predate 1940 except the 1974 Hocking Co. capture. (The 1998 release site is not on the map.) This species was widely distributed in eastern and central North America, but either it was never very common or it existed in small pockets. We prefer the latter for reasons that we will reveal in an upcoming OC. N. defodiens. This boreal species barely gets into northeast Ohio and the map is probably a legitimate reflection of its distribution. N. marginatus. This prefers open meadows, grasslands, and prairie remnants. It is widespread in the eastern and central USA. N. orbicollis. This is the most common species we encounter in pitfalls and at light traps. It occurs in a wide variety of habitats but usually associated with forests or woodlots nearby. Further collecting will probably reveal a statewide distribution. N. pustulatus. This seems more closely associated with forests than is orbicollis. It is commonly collected at blacklights but is infrequent in pitfalls. It probably occurs statewide although one might spend a lot of time looking without success in the heavily agricultural counties of northwest Ohio. N. sayi. This is the earliest Nicrophorus to emerge from overwintering and its infrequency of capture may result partly from lazy Ohio Coleopterists who don’t install their traps soon enough. Its association with forests seems even stronger than that of pustulatus and it may be rare or absent in northwestern Ohio because of that. N. tomentosus. This is our only diurnal Nicrophorus species and resembles a small bumblebee so closely that coleopterists may pass it up. It is our second most frequently collected species and probably occurs statewide. Necrodes surinamensis. This occurs at carrion and at lights. It is not usually common although can be locally abundant and seems to prefer extremely putrefied bait. It probably occurs statewide. Nicrophila americana. This is the most abundant of the "carrion beetles," silphids that do not bury carcasses. Further collecting will doubtless yield a statewide distribution. Oeceoptoma inaequale. We encounter this species less frequently than the next, although it seems widely distributed in a variety of habitats and probably occurs statewide. O. noveboracense. This is the more common of the two Oeceoptoma species and doubtless occurs throughout Ohio. The two Oeceoptoma species tend to be mutually exclusive and one species dominates in samples from a given locality. Reasons for this are unexplored. - George Keeney & Dave Horn |