Laemostenus (Pristonychus) algerinus Gory, 1833

Ghannem, Samir, Touaylia, Samir & Boumaiza, Moncef, 2015, Ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) diversity in Center and Southern Tunisia., Arquivos Entomolóxicos 14, pp. 177-184 : 182-183

Laemostenus (Pristonychus) algerinus Gory, 1833

Material examined. Kairouan (El Guatranya), 1 ♀, 28 August 2013 .

Collection sites. The specimen was collected under stones.

Distribution. North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Europe: Spain, France, Italy ( Bedel 1895; Antoine 1955; Löbl & Smetana 2003).

Faunistic studies are a useful tool to get a better knowledge of the distribution of carabids in different localities and ecosystems of Tunisia. The structure of vegetation affects carabid spatial distribution maybe due to the microclimatic differences found in different plant structures, as well as perhaps due to the differentiation of faunal communities and faunal interactions by plant architectures ( den Boer 1977; Luff 1998).

In this study, a total of 19 species belonging to 3 subfamilies were collected from different localities. Of the three subfamilies studied here, Harpalinae is the most abundant with 16 species (84.2% of total), while the subfamily Carabinae is the less abundant with 2 species (10.5% of total). The subfamily Scaritinae is only represented by 1 species (5.2% of total). The subfamily Harpalinae with 19,000 species is the richest group of ground beetles ( Lorenz 2005). Carabids respond more to the physical structure of the environment than to the species composition ( Brose 2003; Jeanneret et al. 2003).

More effort must be made to get more information about the spatio-temporal distribution of carabid species in all ecosystems of the country to help to identify and locate endemic species, rare or endangered species for conservation.