Interspecific and intraspecific variation in diet preference in five Atlantic forest dung beetle species

Abstract

1. Dung beetles are commonly assumed to be generalist feeders, but there has been limited work in identifying whether there is interspecific variation in feeding preference. Equally, there has been no work exploring whether generalist feeding behaviour in a species is a result of within-species specialisation.2. This study identified the individual and species-level feeding preferences of five dung beetle species towards human, jaguar and pig dung using a choice experiment.3. It was found that species varied in their preference for the dung types, but there was no evidence that within a species, individual beetles varied in their dung choice. These findings were similar to results from field experiments that are more typically used to assess feeding preferences in dung beetles.4. The results suggest that individual specialism in feeding may not be common in dung beetles. However, there is variation in feeding preferences among species, which is often overlooked and can have implications for the ecosystem functions they provide. It is suggested that choice arenas can be used to assess feeding preferences in dung beetle species that are not abundant enough to reliably estimate dietary choice from field studies.

Tropical forest dung beetle–mammal dung interaction networks remain similar across an environmental disturbance gradient

“…This is something that should be investigated further with food-choice experiments (e.g. Raine et al, 2019b). Thus, while the overall species richness and composition across the dung types may have varied only minimally until the networks became severely perturbed, the abundances of individual species on the different dung types changed (Figure 2b).…”

Dung beetles as vertebrate samplers – a test of high throughput analysis of dung beetle iDNA

“…2008), meaning there is the potential opportunity to use iDNA as a way to build quantitative networks of interactions between individual dung beetle and mammal species. Such networks have been attempted using traps baited with different mammal dung types (Raine et al . 2019, Ong et al .…”

Dung beetle‐megafauna trophic networks in Singapore’s fragmented forests

“…Additional work using a wider variety of dung types is needed to explore this further. As we only focussed on feeding networks, a further study on breeding networks (see Raine et al, 2019) would allow comparisons between dung types used for feeding and breeding, which is not yet known for South‐East Asian dung beetles.…”

“…Recent work has shown that most dung beetles are generalists when foraging (Frank et al, 2018). However, even generalist dung beetle species have been shown to differentiate variations among differing dung compositions, size, and shape, and display preferences for certain dung types (Peck & Howden, 1984; Nichols & Gardner, 2011; Raine et al, 2019). Moreover, while dung beetle–mammal co‐occurrences have been relatively well studied in the Neotropics (e.g., Bogoni et al, 2014; 2019; Nichols et al, 2016), dung beetle–mammal interactions are little explored in South‐East Asia's forests (Frank et al, 2018; Raine & Slade, 2019).…”