Diving beetle

Diving beetle conservation

The greatest threat to diving beetles is the degradation and disappearance of their habitats due to anthropogenic activities. For example, urbanisation has led to the decreasing quantity and quality of dytiscid habitats, which consequentially has increased the distance between habitats.; thus, dytiscids may be exposed to high predation risks during dispersal. The negative effects of urbanisation on dytiscid communities can be long-lasting from the temporal perspective. Some species may go extinct across an urban landscape in a long term, resulting in further losses of urban biodiversity. Urbanisation has complex effects on the inter- and intraspecific variation in dytiscid traits. Some flight-related traits of Acilius canaliculatus and Hydaticus seminiger, such as body length and hindwing traits, were found to change along the urban gradient at different scales, whereas the traits of Ilybius ater exhibited no change.