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

Abstract

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.

Spatiotemporal effects on dung beetle activities in island forests-home garden matrix in a tropical village landscape

“…In open habitat, day and night supported a similar abundance of dung beetles. This contrasts with the findings of Iannuzzi et al 54 and da Silva et al 31 , who found a higher abundance activity of dung beetles in open habitats during day in Neotropical climates of Brazil. In closed habitats, da Silva et al 31 found a higher abundance of dung beetles during the day, but Iannuzzi et al 54 found a higher abundance of dung beetles during the night.…”

“…This contrasts with the findings of Iannuzzi et al 54 and da Silva et al 31 , who found a higher abundance activity of dung beetles in open habitats during day in Neotropical climates of Brazil. In closed habitats, da Silva et al 31 found a higher abundance of dung beetles during the day, but Iannuzzi et al 54 found a higher abundance of dung beetles during the night. In our study, the nocturnal abundance of dung beetles was higher than diurnal abundance in closed habitats, a pattern Iannuzzi et al 54 reported for Neotropical lowlands.…”

“…Recent studies have unraveled certain habitat- or geographical region-specific patterns for dung beetle species distribution in habitats and microhabitats across different diel periods. One proposal was that the nocturnal community of species of closed habitats could be a subset of the diurnal community of open habitat species in a tropical high altitude forest fragment-grassland system 31 . The other finding was that the diurnal beetles, due to thermoregulatory constraints, could be smaller and metallic, and the nocturnal species could be larger and black 30 , 32 , 33 .…”

Predicted distributions could suggest regional sympatry in spite of local allopatry: The case of the dung beetle Canthon rutilans Castelnau, 1840 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)

“…2018; da Silva et al . 2019), being its distribution related with the presence of high‐altitude grasslands or Pampas biomes. These two habitat types share many dung beetle species (da Silva et al .…”

“…These two habitat types share many dung beetle species (da Silva et al . 2008, 2009, 2012, 2019; Audino et al . 2011; da Silva 2017), probably as a consequence of the shared biogeographic origin of these two habitats in southern Brazil, which have expanded and contracted their ranges during the Pleistocene glacial/interglacial periods (Leite et al .…”