Environmental Cues Induce Dispersal and Burial in Crawling Water Beetle, Haliplus punctatus (Coleoptera: Haliplidae)

Abstract

Aquatic insects are known to modify their behavior in response to environmental conditions, but manipulative experiments are necessary to distinguish which environmental cues trigger which behaviors. Understanding these responses is particularly important for arid-land aquatic taxa because ongoing climate change is predicted to make the current extreme abiotic environment even more extreme. Here we conducted a manipulative experiment to determine the behavioral responses of a widespread and common crawling water beetle, Haliplus punctatus (Coleoptera: Haliplidae), to three environmental cues, temperature, conductivity, and water level, and recorded two behaviors, dispersal and burial. We found that increasing water temperature caused animals to bury less and disperse more, but that neither conductivity nor water level affected beetle behaviors. These responses to temperature may have widespread consequences for natural populations.