Influence of land use on the taxonomic and functional diversity of dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) in the southern Atlantic forest of Argentina

Gómez-Cifuentes, Andrés; Munévar, Ana; Gimenez, Victoria C.; Gatti, M. Genoveva; Zurita, Gustavo A.

doi:10.1007/s10841-017-9964-4

Cited by 61 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…A similar pattern was also found by Gómez‐Cifuentes et al . (), who evaluated four types of land uses in relation to dung beetle functional richness and diversity in a northern Argentinean Atlantic Forest. However, this pattern was maintained only for night assemblages when using Rao functional divergence index.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of habitat and daily activity patterns in explaining the diversity of mountain Neotropical dung beetle assemblages

2018

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The interaction between land use and climate change is expected to strongly affect species distributions along high elevation landscapes. We aimed to test the effect of climatic variables on community metrics among five types of land use in a high elevation landscape. We described dung beetle spatial and temporal taxonomic and functional diversity patterns, and partitioned b-diversity into turnover and nestedness components. The interaction between land use and daily period of activity mostly drives abundance, functional richness and functional diversity, but not dung beetle species richness. Unlike Neotropical lowlands, species richness and abundance in open environments are similar to those existing in forests. Temperature is an important predictor of abundance and functional divergence. There is a higher spatial component of the taxonomic b-diversity, which is highly driven by species turnover. The temporal component of the taxonomic b-diversity was strongly driven by nestedness, where night assemblages are sub-sets, although not entirely, of diurnal assemblages. For functional diversity, the temporal b-diversity was much higher than the spatial b-diversity, but both were similarly represented by functional group turnover and nestedness. The composition of nocturnal and diurnal assemblages is clearly different, even more than the differences observed between habitats. However, taxonomic turnover is the dominant force between sampling sites while nestedness dominates the daily pattern. This means that forest habitats are unlikely to act as shelters for grassland species under a scenario of rising temperature.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of habitat and daily activity patterns in explaining the diversity of mountain Neotropical dung beetle assemblages

2018

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“…These effects have been observed across numerous taxa with diverse ecologies and spanning multiple trophic levels such as bees, beetles, butterflies, hemipterans, orthopterans, spiders (Börschig et al ., ; Rader et al ., ; Forrest et al ., ; Gámez‐Virués et al ., ; Mazzia et al ., ; Simons, Weisser & Gossner, ; De Palma et al ., ; Hanson et al ., ; but see Perović et al ., ; Le Provost et al ., ; Ng et al ., ), and soil‐dwelling arthropods in dozens of orders (Birkhofer et al ., ; Rigal et al ., ). By contrast, the effects of high‐intensity land use on the functional structures of arthropod communities may be buffered by landscape heterogeneity in relatively complex habitats such as forests (Edwards et al ., ; Gossner et al ., ; Gámez‐Virués et al ., ; Perović et al ., ; Birkhofer et al ., ; Gómez‐Cifuentes et al ., ; Murray et al ., ; Salas‐Lopez et al ., ; but see Martello et al ., ). It is important to note that most studies were conducted in temperate regions; additional studies incorporating varying landscapes and land‐use practices (grazing, logging etc.)…”

Section: Current Trait‐based Studies On Terrestrial Arthropodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Trait‐based ecology of terrestrial arthropods

2018

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In focusing on how organisms' generalizable functional properties (traits) interact mechanistically with environments across spatial scales and levels of biological organization, trait-based approaches provide a powerful framework for attaining synthesis, generality and prediction. Trait-based research has considerably improved understanding of the assembly, structure and functioning of plant communities. Further advances in ecology may be achieved by exploring the trait-environment relationships of non-sessile, heterotrophic organisms such as terrestrial arthropods, which are geographically ubiquitous, ecologically diverse, and often important functional components of ecosystems. Trait-based studies and trait databases have recently been compiled for groups such as ants, bees, beetles, butterflies, spiders and many others; however, the explicit justification, conceptual framework, and primary-evidence base for the burgeoning field of 'terrestrial arthropod trait-based ecology' have not been well established. Consequently, there is some confusion over the scope and relevance of this field, as well as a tendency for studies to overlook important assumptions of the trait-based approach. Here we aim to provide a broad and accessible overview of the trait-based ecology of terrestrial arthropods. We first define and illustrate foundational concepts in trait-based ecology with respect to terrestrial arthropods, and justify the application of trait-based approaches to the study of their ecology. Next, we review studies in community ecology where trait-based approaches have been used to elucidate how assembly processes for terrestrial arthropod communities are influenced by niche filtering along environmental gradients (e.g. climatic, structural, and land-use gradients) and by abiotic and biotic disturbances (e.g. fire, floods, and biological invasions). We also review studies in ecosystem ecology where trait-based approaches have been used to investigate biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships: how the functional diversity of arthropod communities relates to a host of ecosystem functions and services that they mediate, such as decomposition, pollination and predation. We then suggest how future work can address fundamental assumptions and limitations by investigating trait functionality and the effects of intraspecific variation, assessing the potential for sampling methods to bias the traits and trait values observed, and enhancing the quality and consolidation of trait information in databases. A roadmap to guide observational trait-based studies is also presented. Lastly, we highlight new areas where trait-based studies on terrestrial arthropods are well positioned to advance ecological understanding and application. These include examining the roles of competitive, non-competitive and (multi-)trophic interactions in shaping coexistence, and macro-scaling trait-environment relationships to explain and predict patterns in biodiversity and ecosystem functions across space and time. We hope this review will spur a...

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“…In the two wet regions with a low-intermediate precipitation seasonality (the humid Chaco and the Atlantic forest), dung beetle diversity in open livestock areas strongly differed from the native forest and the silvopastoral system; in contrast, in the region showing the strongest seasonality of precipitation (dry Chaco) differences on dung beetle diversity between livestock systems and native forests were not evident. Most previous studies have focused on the local consequences of cattle grazing [31][32][33]35,41,70,71 or on the importance of regional and local factors determining patterns of dung beetle diversity 30,[72][73][74] . However, this is one of the first field studies that explicitly considers the interaction of both scales through the comparison of the response of dung beetles to cattle raising among different regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scarabaeinae dung beetles are widely used as focal taxa in ecological studies because of their high diversity, wide distributional ranges, ecological role and sensitivity to human disturbances 28,29 . Previous studies have shown a reduction in both the taxonomic and functional diversity of dung beetles associated to the replacement of native forests by open pastures for cattle grazing [30][31][32] . In contrast, a series of recent studies showed that cattle areas preserving the forest canopy (particularly of native trees) totally or partially preserve the native diversity of dung beetles in forest ecosystems [33][34][35][36][37] .…”

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confidence: 99%

Dung beetles response to livestock management in three different regional contexts

Alonso

Zurita

Bellocq

2020

Sci Rep

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the response of biological communities to human disturbances depends on factors acting at local and regional scale and on the interaction between them. We compared the response of native forest dung beetle communities to cattle grazing under regional contexts differing on precipitation patterns (Atlantic forest and humid and dry chaco). through multivariate and GLMM analyses we contrasted richness and composition across regions and land uses and explored the role of local and regional variables accounting for those changes. We captured a total of 44101 individuals of 109 species. The interaction between local and regional variables influenced the response to livestock management. in the two wet regions (humid chaco and Atlantic forest) diversity was similar in the native forest regardless of cattle presence but differs strongly in open pastures. In contrast, in the dry Chaco, differences between native forest and land use were not evident. Vegetation structure was a major determinant of species richness, whereas regional climate determined differences in species composition. We concluded that the response of dung beetles to livestock management cannot be generalized for all biomes. in dry ecosystems, dung beetles are probably pre-adapted to environmental conditions imposed by cattle ranching whereas in wet ecosystems the impact of cattle ranching is more significant.

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Influence of land use on the taxonomic and functional diversity of dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) in the southern Atlantic forest of Argentina

Cited by 61 publications

References 46 publications

The role of habitat and daily activity patterns in explaining the diversity of mountain Neotropical dung beetle assemblages

The role of habitat and daily activity patterns in explaining the diversity of mountain Neotropical dung beetle assemblages

Trait‐based ecology of terrestrial arthropods

Dung beetles response to livestock management in three different regional contexts

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