Although the impacts of urbanisation on biodiversity are well studied, the precise response of some invertebrate groups remains poorly known. Dung-associated beetles are little studied in an urban context, especially in temperate regions. We considered how landscape heterogeneity, assessed at three spatial scales (250, 500 and 1000 m radius), mediates the community composition of coprophilous beetles on a broad urban gradient. Beetles were sampled using simple dung-baited traps, placed at 48 sites stratified across three distance bands around a large urban centre in England. The most urban sites hosted the lowest abundance of saprophagous beetles, with a lower mean body length relative to the least urban sites. Predicted overall species richness and the richness of saprophagous species were also lowest at the most urban sites. Ordination analyses followed by variation partitioning revealed that landscape heterogeneity across the urban gradient explained a small but significant proportion of community composition. Heterogeneity data for a 500-m radius around each site provided the best fit with beetle community data. Larger saprophagous species were associated with lower amounts of manmade surface and improved grassland. Some individual species, particularly predators, appeared to be positively associated with urban or urban fringe sites. This study is probably the first to examine the response of the whole coprophilous beetle community to urbanisation. Our results suggest that the response of this community to urbanisation matches expectations based on other taxonomic groups, whilst emphasising the complex nature of this response, with some smaller-bodied species potentially benefitting from urbanisation.

中文翻译：

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喂食行会和体型在共生甲虫群落中介导的城市化和景观异质性的影响

尽管对城市化对生物多样性的影响进行了很好的研究，但一些无脊椎动物群体的确切反应仍然知之甚少。在城市环境中，尤其是在温带地区，很少研究与粪便相关的甲虫。我们考虑了在三个空间尺度（半径分别为250、500和1000 m）上评估的景观异质性如何在广泛的城市梯度上介导共生甲虫的群落组成。使用简单的粪便诱集器对甲虫进行采样，将它们放置在英格兰一个大型城市中心周围三个距离带上的48个地点。大部分城市地区的腐烂甲虫数量最少，相对于最少城市地区的平均体长较低。在大多数城市地区，预计的总体物种丰富度和腐烂物种的丰富度也最低。排序分析后再进行变异划分，结果表明，整个城市梯度的景观异质性解释了社区组成的一小部分，但占很大比例。每个地点周围500米半径处的异质性数据与甲虫群落数据最匹配。大量腐烂物种与较少的人造地表和改良的草地有关。一些个体物种，特别是掠食者，似乎与城市或城市边缘地区呈正相关。这项研究可能是第一个考察整个共生甲虫社区对城市化的反应的研究。我们的结果表明，该社区对城市化的反应符合基于其他分类学群体的期望，同时强调了这种反应的复杂性，