Understanding how species use and persist in agricultural areas is useful for planning conservation efforts at the landscape scale. Information at the population level is scarce, even for organisms, such as dung beetles, that are traditionally used in biodiversity studies to evaluate the effects of anthropic disturbance. Based on multiple mark-recapture events, the description of movement patterns and three population parameters (population size, survival and recruitment) were compared for two dung beetle species (Dichotomius cf. alyattes and Oxysternon conspicillatum) in a fragmented Andean landscape dominated by sun-grown coffee crops. Interspecific differences were detected in movement patterns and in the minimum distance moved across the landscape, with the latter associated with wing loading and species habitat preferences. D. cf. alyattes was captured in both the forest and in sungrown coffee plots, but tended to limit its movement to patches of forest, while O. conspicillatum covered large distances in short periods of time across the sun-grown coffee crops (ca. 1.7 km/24 h). The population of each species increased during the months of greatest precipitation, prior to the recruitment of new beetles. Given their great capacity for movement, habitat preference and their differential use of the landscape, the species studied can be used as models to evaluate the functional connectivity of Andean landscapes under high anthropic demand. Our results support the idea of the differential response of species to land-use changes, an aspect that should be considered for effective biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning in human-dominated landscapes.

Despite their importance as ecological indicators of anthropic perturbation, most of our knowledge about Neotropical dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) is derived from studies conducted at the community level. To date, at a global scale, there is still incipient knowledge about the population ecology of the Scarabeinae species. The study of these insects at the population level offers new data pertaining to demographic aspects such as population size and adult longevity in the field. On the 6th of August 2017, within a patch of a cloud forest in the municipality of La Celia in Risaralda, Colombia, we recaptured a male specimen of Dichotomius aff. alyattes Harold that was marked 5 years ago, on the 15th of May 2012. The individual was marked with a number 8 on its right elytron and it was recaptured in the same patch forest, which has been sampled since 2008. After an exhaustive review of the field information and literature, this data represents the longest recorded longevity known for Scarabaeinae. Beyond being a fortuitous event, this recapture prompts a review of our ideas regarding the reproductive biology and vulnerability of dung beetle species in landscapes of high anthropic demand, with an emphasis on Neotropical species.

We describe a new inexpensive and simple method for marking large dung beetles (>10 mm), which consists in tattooing a consecutive number on their elytra or pronotum with a Mototool. The recapture rate (18.5% of 1886 marked individuals) throughout five months shows high durability of the mark without affecting the integrity of the individual.