We are indebted to Dr Jari Niemela and Dr Tibor Magura for constructive suggestions on the experiment and providing important references. We are grateful to Mrs Xiao-Ping Zhou, Jin-Yan Huang, Shi-Qiang Zhou, Yuan-Jun Jiang, Shu-Ming Fan, Guo-You Li and You-Qian Yang (Wolong Natural Reserve, Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province) for assistance in field experiments. This study was supported in part by a State Key Basic Research and Development Plan from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (G2000046800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30570215), a grant to the senior author (No. D/3684-1) of International Foundation for Sciences (IFS, Stockholm, Sweden), and National Science Fund for Fostering Talents in Basic Research (NSFC-J0030092).
The influence of edge effect on ground-dwelling beetles (Coleoptera) across a forest-clearcut ecotone was studied in Wolong Natural Reserve, southwestern China. During the field research, a total of 30 739 beetles w...