D3145: Dens, dunes, and dung: Evaluating overlooked Coleoptera microhabitats in Vietnam

Beetles (Coleoptera) are the most diverse lineage of life on earth, owing much of their success to their utilization of a wide array of microhabitats. Much of the faunistic work previously done on Coleoptera has focused on their associations with flowering plants or fungi; however, there are many microhabitats where beetles exist that are overlooked. We conducted a survey on a select variety of often overlooked microhabitats in Vietnam, focusing our efforts on caves, sand dunes, and mammal burrows. We surveyed a cave in Cuc Phuong National Park, sand dunes in central Vietnam, and the substrate of mammalian burrows from three national parks spanning the length of Vietnam. We sampled individuals in each microhabitat, cascading sand, utilizing Winkler funnels, or actively searching substrates. We found a variety of taxa spanning six coleopteran families. Several of these likely represent undescribed taxa, demonstrating the importance of targeting these rare microhabitats where a need for conservation exists.