They investigate the benefits that beetles bring to ecosystems and human activities | Only in northeastern Patagonia there are more than 60 varieties

2023-05-30 04:31:12

Researchers from the Patagonian Institute for the Study of Continental Ecosystems (IPEEC, Conicet), analyze the benefits that beetles bring to ecosystems and human activities in Patagonia. Among other things, this insect collaborates in the fertilization of arid soil, the choice of conservation areas and the evaluation of the effects of desertification. Although it was believed that the diversity of this animal was low in the area, only in the city of Puerto Madryn and its surroundings there are more than 60 varieties of beetles.

“These animals are very sensitive to environmental changes and since each group can respond differently, the great diversity of species allows us to have a large number of tools to predict and understand these changes”, assures German CheliIPEEC researcher.

For example, the presence or absence of populations of certain beetles and other insects and arachnids (which can be called arthropods) works as an indicator to assess desertification due to overgrazing by livestock. This phenomenon produces changes related to the fragmentation of the vegetation and the compaction of the soil that affect the arthropod fauna. Under this premise, researchers can predict the environmental changes of the ecosystem mediated by the intensity of grazing and provide management recommendations to sheep producers to obtain better profitability from their fields.

workers and helpful

In general, insects and arachnids are associated with what is unpleasant, with what harms and transmits diseases. However, they also have positive functions. In the arid regions of Patagonia, nature has assigned very small animals a very big responsibility. For example, arthropods are responsible for returning to the ecosystem the energy that is lost.

In this sense, the beetles obtain their food from decomposing organic matter and, after feeding, the fecal matter is degraded with a high content of nitrogen and phosphorus. “Both nutrients re-enter the ecosystem and are reused in the germination of new plants.. This allows the recirculation of a good part of the energy that would otherwise be lost”, explains the researcher.

Nyctelia circummundata is a species of beetle commonly called “catanguita” and has the greatest adaptation to aridity that exists among insects. During its evolutionary process, it lost its ability to fly but generated an air chamber between the first pair of modified wings and the body wall that increases its ability to avoid losing water through transpiration. “It is nature that proposes regulation and transformation mechanisms in the life of these animalsalthough sometimes they are altered by human activities”, he highlights.

This adaptation, added to other strategies, enables it to inhabit hostile environments (with low humidity and temperatures that exceed 35 degrees) and to be active under extreme conditions where very few organisms can survive. “That is why they continue to exercise their ecosystem services even in the height of summer, providing essential nutrients to the soil from eating dead plants, when even soil microorganisms are deactivated due to excess temperature and lack of moisture” Cheli details.

A conservationist species

So, this species constitutes a key component for the conservation of coastal dunes since, without this beetle, the soils of the dunes would be impoverished in essential nutrients for the plants, which in turn are important to fix the sand of the dune.

Beetles also help fight pests, they have a broad diet that includes the consumption of various species of living plants. One of her favorites is the yellow flower, arugula, or arugula: It is a species of exotic plant native to Europe that invades the coastal dunes of northeastern Patagonia, causing a decrease in the coverage of some native plants. such as the unquillo, a species used to make brooms.

“Both species, the exotic and the native, compete for space and the local one is the one that loses. But, like these beetles they eat the exotic plant, act as a safeguard to prevent the unquillo from becoming locally extinct in the region”, comments Cheli.