Forest regeneration affects dung beetle assemblages (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) in the southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Bitencourt, Bruna Santos; Silva, Pedro Giovâni da

doi:10.1007/s10841-016-9917-3

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 72 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Due to high fragmentation and habitat loss of the Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil (Ribeiro et al ., 2009), only a small part of the dung beetle assemblage remains in all sites sampled. Our results reveal that less than 25% of the species occur in all sites and several studies highlighted similar patterns (da Silva & Hernández, 2014; Bitencourt & da Silva, 2016; da Silva & Hernández, 2016). Since the investigation of the factors underlying the spatial distribution of dung beetles is not the scope of this study, this topic remains important to be inquired to elucidate the high spatial substitution of species even at relatively close sites.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Climatic variables drive temporal patterns of α and β diversities of dung beetles

Ferreira

Silva

Paladini

et al. 2018

Bull. Entomol. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding the mechanisms underpinning spatiotemporal diversity patterns of biological communities is a major goal of ecology. We aimed to test two ecological hypotheses: (i) temporal patterns of β-diversity will mostly be driven by nestedness, with a loss of species from summer to winter, and (ii) nestedness values will correlate with climatic variables instead of turnover values, indicating either a loss of species during winter or a gain of species during summer. We sampled dung beetles using standardized sampling protocols along a year in four Atlantic forest sites: two at the northwest and two at the central region of Rio Grande do Sul state, southern Brazil. We partitioned temporal patterns of β-diversity into turnover and nestedness in order to investigate if community changes are driven by species substitution or gain/loss across time. Our results highlighted five main findings: (i) dung beetle composition varied more with sites than site geographic position; (ii) there was almost one and a half 'true' dung beetle assemblages regarding the spatial distribution of species weighed by abundance; (iii) we found a positive influence of mean temperature and a negative influence of relative humidity on both species richness and abundance; (iv) both spatial and temporal dissimilarity among sites were dominated by species replacement, while the relative importance of nestedness was higher in temporal than spatial patterns; (v) there was an effect of precipitation and relative humidity on temporal patterns of β-diversity components, but these effects were site-dependent. Contrary to our expectations, the β-diversity component of turnover dominated both spatial and temporal patterns in dung beetle dissimilarity among sites and months. Distinct climatic variables affected differently the α-diversity and β-diversity components of dung beetle assemblages. Partitioning β-diversity into temporal components is a promising approach to unveil patterns of the community dynamics and to produce insights on mechanisms underlying such patterns.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Climatic variables drive temporal patterns of α and β diversities of dung beetles

Ferreira

Silva

Paladini

et al. 2018

Bull. Entomol. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The EstimateS program (Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA) was used for analyses, with 100 randomisations of the data [47]. Rank-abundance diagrams were constructed to describe and compare the distribution of abundance and dominance of species at each sampling site using relative abundance data [48]. To describe these distributions numerically, the Pielou equitability index was adopted, based on the Shannon diversity index.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distribution of aerophilous diatom communities associated with terrestrial green macroalgae in the South Shetland Islands, Maritime Antarctica

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The establishment of diatom communities depends on environmental factors such as the type of substrate and geographic conditions that influence the dispersal processes of these organisms. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the similarity between diatom communities associated with the macroalgae Prasiola crispa (Lightfoot) Kützing in relation to spatial distance from six sampled sites located in the South Shetland Islands, Maritime Antarctica. The diatom flora associated with Prasiola crispa was represented by 23 species distributed in 15 genera. Pinnularia australoschoenfelderi Zidarova, Kopalová & Van de Vijver, Luticola austroatlantica Van de Vijver, Kopalová, S.A.Spaulding & Esposito, Luticola amoena Van der Vijver, Kopalová, Zidarova & Levkov, Pinnularia austroshetlandica (Carlson) Cleve-Euler and Psammothidium papilio (D.E. Kellogg et al.) Kopalová & Zidarova were the most abundant species in our samples, together they represented 68% of the total number of individuals collected. There was great similarity and abundance of the diatom communites among the sampled points, which resulted in the absence of a linear relationship pattern with distance between sampling points. We conclude that distance was not a factor of differentiation of Antarctic diatom communities associated with terrestrial green macroalgae. This suggests that Antarctic environments may have unique characteristics with homogeneous abiotic factors, at least in relation to this substrate.

show abstract

“…Despite dung beetle assemblages in Central Amazonia have recovered rapidly after forest fragmentation (Quintero & Roslin, 2005), more degraded landscapes keep losing diversity, even after important local efforts of conservation or restoration (Escobar et al, 2008;Spake et al, 2015). Although dung beetle assemblages have the potential to recover with restoration in some ecosystems (Barnes et al, 2014;Bitencourt & da Silva, 2016;Davis et al, 2003;Derhé et al 2016), sometimes they may not recover completely (Hernández et al, 2014;Medina et al, 2002) or do not recover at all (Steenkamp & Chown, 1996), even in 18 year-old restoration plantings (Audino et al, 2014), suggesting that restoration may take longer times before recovering dung beetle communities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Success or failure: the role of ecological restoration on the recovery of dung beetle diversity and function in a tropical rainforest

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent studies have shown that ecological restoration hardly recovers diversity and ecosystem function of important bioindicator groups such as dung beetles, which have key functional roles in natural and managed ecosystems. Here, we evaluated dung beetle diversity and ecological function in a restored area in a tropical rainforest landscape that comprises 10-year old cattle exclusions that include plantings of local trees and unplanted exclusions that resemble natural succession. As control habitats, we used neighbor pastures and sites in the nearest conserved forest. We found that the restored area did not improve dung beetle abundance and diversity compared to the forest, and did not differ from pastures. On the other hand, dung removal, a key ecosystem function, was similar in the forest and the restored area, but was not carried out by dung beetles in the restored area. Our study supports previous evidence showing that restoration efforts are hardly helping to recover dung beetle diversity despite they can eventually favor the recovery of function. Our results highlight the importance of considering landscape context in restoration programs, including alternative conservation strategies, such as maintenance of forest patches and restoration of connectivity between fragments to maintain dung beetle diversity and function.

show abstract

Forest regeneration affects dung beetle assemblages (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) in the southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Cited by 11 publications

References 72 publications

Climatic variables drive temporal patterns of α and β diversities of dung beetles

Climatic variables drive temporal patterns of α and β diversities of dung beetles

Distribution of aerophilous diatom communities associated with terrestrial green macroalgae in the South Shetland Islands, Maritime Antarctica

Success or failure: the role of ecological restoration on the recovery of dung beetle diversity and function in a tropical rainforest

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About