In a gallery forest in the oriental flat lands of Meta-Colombia, dung beetles associated to three sections inside a forest with different times of alteration by deforestation (50, 5 and 1 year) were studied. Pitfall traps were used to data collection. Richness, abundance and diversity of species were calculated, during the rain season. 2358 individuals of 22 species were captured. For the three sections Canthidium cupreum was the most dominant species. 27,3% from the total species is specific from a section, 40,9% was found in two of the three sections, and 31,8% is generalists. Brillouin index showed that the forest section of 5 years of alteration has the highest diversity with 1233 individuals and 16 species, followed by the forest section of 1 year with 607 individuals and 14 species and finally the forest section of 50 years with 518 individuals and 15 species. These results indicate that a proportional relation among conservation of a forest and dung beetles diversity does not exist, and suggests a positive correlation among transformed areas and high diversity index results. Probably selective deforestation is contributing to conserve dung beetles populations inside this ecosystem, and also to maintain functional processes for this kind of forests.
Publication Year
2007
Publication Site
Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias, Univ. Javeriana, Bogota
Journal Volume
12
Page Numbers
51–63
Family
Scarabaeidae
General topic
Ecology
Specific topic
habitat disturbance
Abstract Note