Does one size suit all? Dung pad size and ball production by Scarabaeus sacer (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae)

Sullivan, Greg; Ozman‐Sullivan, Sebahat K.; Lumaret, Jean‐Pierre; Zalucki, Myron P.; Baxter, Greg

doi:10.14411/eje.2016.008

Cited by 8 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Local dung beetle communities reflect the combined effects of many abiotic and biotic factors that include soil and vegetation type (Doube 1983;Kirk 1983;Lumaret and Kirk 1987;Sullivan 2016a), source of dung (herbivore, carnivore and omnivore) (Bernon 1981;Doube 1987;Dormont et al 2007;Filgueiras et al 2009; Whipple 2011), age of dung pad/dung moisture level (Doube 1987;Barth et al 1994;Kryger et al 2006), size of pad (Peck and Howden 1984;Finn and Giller 2000), segment of pad (Barth 1994;, soil moisture/rainfall events (Kingston 1977;Lumaret 1978), altitude (Mittal 1981;Moron and Zaragoza 1976;Avila and Pascual 1987), latitude (Kirk and Ridsdill-Smith 1986;Hanski 1991b), mean temperature/season (Lumaret 1979;Davis 1989) and diel activity (Bernon 1981;Sullivan et al 2016bSullivan et al , 2017. Of these, latitude, climate, altitude and soil and vegetation types typically shape regional communities; Doube (1991) reported that dung beetle communities in southern Africa are determined primarily by soil type, and to a lesser degree, by vegetation and dung types.…”

Section: Factors Influencing Local Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…preferences for dung of different ages reduce the potential for interspecific and interguild competition by providing multiple opportunities for a particular species in a local assemblage to acquire sufficient resource for feeding and breeding purposes, thus promoting coexistence (Montes de Oca and Halffter 1995;Palestrini et al 1995;Boonrotpong et al 2012;Sullivan et al 2016b).…”

Section: Acknowledgementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The four replicates were arranged in two parallel rows, with two replicates in each row. There was 10 m between the rows, 6 m between the replicates, and 5 m between the pads (Sullivan et al 2016b). The total length of each row was 136 m. At the time of the experiment, the sand was very dry and loose from the surface to 8…”

Section: Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Collecting standardised pads when rollers are most active detects them but underestimates their number . Sullivan et al (2016b) reported that most S. sacer individuals are active at dung pads for a short period at late dusk and into the early night. That meant it is unlikely that S. sacer would be present at pads at the designated collection times in the present study.…”

Section: Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, all of the dung pads were monitored by two observers who walked along the outside of the two lines of pads at 15 min intervals and at 5 to 10 min intervals during peak ball production periods, using weak torchlight when necessary. To separate users from 'visitors', one dung ball produced was equated to one S. sacer for total abundance and biomass purposes (Sullivan et al 2016b). Monitoring was terminated after 72 h, by which time the dung pads were too desiccated for ball production.…”

Section: Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aspects of temporal resource partitioning among dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) of the Kizilirmak Delta on the Black Sea Coast of Turkey

Sullivan¹

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Local assemblages of dung beetles in natural and altered ecosystems worldwide contribute to a suite of ecological functions and ecosystem services, including bioturbation and pest and parasite suppression. There is generally a strong competitive hierarchy for the dung resource among the three main guilds or functional groups of dung beetle species, with ball rollers more competitive than tunnellers, and tunnellers more competitive than dung dwellers. How are inferior competitors able to co-occur or coexist with superior competitors? Temporal resource partitioning is one of the mechanisms that can facilitate cooccurrence and coexistence in local assemblages. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate if, and how, temporal resource partitioning manifests at the interspecific, intraguild and interguild levels in a warm, temperate climate assemblage of dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae; Aphodiinae, Scarabaeinae) in the Kizilirmak Delta on the central Black Sea coast of northern Turkey. Twenty three species of dung beetles in three guilds were recorded in a seasonal survey of natural dung pads in 2013. In the summer of 2014, the effects of dung pad size on ball production by the large dung ball roller, Scarabaeus sacer (L.) were investigated with standardised dung pads. Ball production by S. sacer was concentrated on a small number of pads of the three largest sizes. Ball size increased but the number of balls produced per 100 g of dung decreased with increasing pad size. Ball production and time of day were significantly related (P < 0.01). In the summers of 2014 and 2015, standardised dung pads were used in two field experiments at the same site that investigated the effects of dung pad deposition time and exposure period, and their interaction, on species richness, abundance and biomass. During the experiments, an additional four dung beetle species were collected, bringing the total number to 27 species that included one ball rolling, 17 dung dwelling and nine tunnelling species. The large ball roller, S. sacer L., and small and medium-sized tunnellers, dominated assemblages in the first 24 h but they were then superseded by dwellers. Succession was highly compressed, with maximum abundance at 12 h and maximum species richness at 24 h. Regression analysis demonstrated a significant relationship (P < 0.01) between species richness and the inverse of the Berger-Parker dominance index (d); i.e., as the number of species increased, the abundance of individual species became more even. ii In addition, ANOVA was used to model the temporal dung use patterns of the dwelling and tunnelling guilds and correlation analysis was used to determine the interspecific and interguild relationships that underpin those patterns. ANOVA revealed significant effects of dung deposition time, dung exposure period, and their interaction, on the mean abundance of guilds. The tunnelling species appear to have been aggregated firstly by relatively synchronous diel activity and then by habitat filtering along the gradient of dec...

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