Even if the role of carabid beetles as indicators is controversial (see e.g. [35, 36]), it has been found that at least in the agricultural landscape they respond to the human artificialization of the environment [10, 16, 23], so that they can be used as model organisms exemplifying the insects living on the ground [18, 37, 38]. In particular, the main environmental factors affecting the species distribution are: the soil structure [23, 39], the type of soil management [40, 41] and the use of pesticides [9, 42]. This paper aims to study carabid beetles distribution in olive groves, for disentangling the possible consequences of different types of soil management. Given that there is a lack of knowledge about the relationships between agroecosystem and carabid communities, the latter need to be assessed in the Mediterranean agricultural landscape, thus the first question is: i) is species distribution affected by increased frequency of soil cultivation?; then ii) what are the main species characterizing olive plantations?; and iii) which species traits are positively/negatively selected by soil cultivation?