Edge and land use effects on dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in Brazilian cerrado vegetation
2016
The Edge Influence is one of the most pervasive effects of
habitat fragmentation, as many forest remnants in anthropogenic landscapes are within 100 m of edges. Forest remnants may also affect the surrounding anthropogenic matrix, possibly resulting in a matrix–edge–remnant diversity gradient for some
species groups. We sampled
dung beetlesin 15 agricultural landscapes using
pitfall trapsplaced along transects in matrix–edge–remnant gradients. The remnants were a native savanna-like vegetation, the cerrado, and the matrix was composed of three human-dominated environments (sugarcane, eucalyptus,
pasture). More species were observed in cerrado remnants than in adjacent land uses.
Dung beetleswere also more abundant in the cerrado than in the landscape matrix of sugarcane and eucalypt, but not of
pasture.
Dung beetleswere severely affected by anthropogenic land uses, and notwithstanding their high abundance in some land uses such as
pasture, the species richness in these areas tended to be smaller than in the cerrado remnants. We also found that the influence of the edge was evident only for abundance, particularly in landscapes with a
pasturematrix. However, this land use disrupts the species composition of communities, indicating that communities located in cerrado and
pasturehave a distinct species composition, and that both communities are affected by edge distance. Thus, anthropogenic land uses may severely affect
dung beetles, and this impact can extend to communities located in cerrado remnants as well as to those in matrices, with possible consequences for ecological processes such as decomposition and
nutrient cycling.
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