Relicts from Glacial Times: The Ground Beetle Eschscholtz, 1823 (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in the Austrian Alps.

The last ice age considerably influenced distribution patterns of extant species of plants and animals, with some of them now inhabiting disjunct areas in the subarctic/arctic and alpine regions. This arctic-alpine distribution is characteristic for many cold-adapted species with a limited dispersal ability and can be found in many invertebrate taxa, including ground beetles. The ground beetle Eschscholtz, 1823 of the subgenus was previously known to have a holarctic-circumpolar distribution, in Europe reaching its southern borders in Wales and southern Scandinavia.

The Cryptic Complex (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Austria: Phylogeny, Distribution, Habitat Usage and a Climatic Characterization Based on COI Sequence Data.

The complex represents a group of three distinct but cryptic bumblebee species in Europe. With the advent of DNA-based identification methods, their species status was confirmed and the use of COI barcoding proved to be an especially useful tool for species identification within the group. Meanwhile, the identification based on morphology remains difficult and recent studies challenged the general distinguishability by revealing an important character to be unreliable.