Assistant Professor University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Grounds beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) are polyphagous predators, and have a continuum of diets which range from specialist to generalist, and carnivore to omnivore to herbivore. In Canadian annual cropping system carabids are beneficial insects as predators of weed seeds and insect pests. However, their impact may be limited by their preferences for different crop microclimates, and the use of crop margins as travel corridors. Pitfall traps (n = 5) were used for biweekly sampling along the crop margin and 100 m into the crop for conventionally managed wheat (Triticum aestivum) and hemp (Cannabis sativa) fields located near Redwater, AB, Canada. The most abundant species within the traps were the introduced, fall breeding species Pterostichus melanarius (Illiger, 1798). Other introduced species such as Pterostichus adstrictus (Eschscholtz, 1823) and Carabus granulatus (Linnaeus, 1758) were also abundant. Analysis on the effect of crop type and distance to edge are still on-going. Further research is needed, especially into species specific diets of carabids which will benefit agricultural producers and lead to more management practices for the conservation of carabids within agroecosystems.