insects Article Endemics Versus Newcomers: The Ladybird Beetle (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) Fauna of Gran Canaria Jerzy Romanowski 1,* , Piotr Ceryngier 1 , Jaroslav Vetrovec˘ 2, Marta Piotrowska 3 and Karol Szawaryn 4 1 Institute of Biological Sciences, Cardinal Stefan Wyszy´nskiUniversity, Wóycickiego 1/3, 01-938 Warsaw, Poland;
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[email protected] 3 Faculty of Biology and Environmental Sciences UKSW, ul. Wóycickiego 1/3, PL-01-938 Warsaw, Poland;
[email protected] 4 Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wilcza 64, 00-679 Warsaw, Poland;
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[email protected] Received: 18 August 2020; Accepted: 14 September 2020; Published: 18 September 2020 Simple Summary: Many plants and animals that live in the Canary Islands belong to the so-called endemic species, i.e., they do not occur outside of this particular region. Several other species have a slightly wider geographical distribution, apart from the Canaries, which also includes some islands of the nearby archipelagos, such as Madeira or the Azores, or the northwestern periphery of Africa. Here, we call such species subendemics. However, the Canary Islands have recently been colonized by a substantial number of immigrants from more or less remote areas. In this paper, based on our field survey and previously published data, we analyzed the fauna of the ladybird beetles (Coccinellidae) of Gran Canaria, one of the central islands of the archipelago. Among 42 ladybird beetle species so far recorded on this island, 17 (40%) are endemics and subendemics, and 21 (50%) probably arrived in Gran Canaria relatively recently, i.e., in the 20th and 21st century.