We studied the effect of the difference in vegetation types on ground-dwelling animal diversity in various taxonomic levels in various spatial scales. In central Japan, spatially structured pitfall traps were set in four vegetation: grassland, natural evergreen coniferous forest, natural deciduous broad-leaved forest and deciduous coniferous plantation. All collected animals were identified into orders, order Coleoptera were identified into families, and family Carabidae were identified into species.

The species-level alpha diversity in narrow spatial scale (4m²) was largest in the coniferous plantation, although those beetle fauna had been regarded poor in evergreen plantations in previous studies. Soil hardness and depth of soil horizon A that negatively affected diversity of Carabidae were lowest in the plantation. However, species-level alpha diversity in broad spatial scale (0.5-1.3 km) was largest in broad-leaved forest, owing to its high beta diversity. In grassland, the species-level alpha diversity was the second highest, while phylum-level alpha diversity was the lowest. In conclusion, we clearly show that what vegetation harbors a higher animal diversity than the others largely depends on spatial scale and taxonomic level that we focus.