Ecotourism can be defined as an environmental activity that takes place in well-preserved areas for recreation and with the responsibility of promoting their conservation. Nowadays, ecotourism is seen as a friendly pastime, but it can potentially affect negatively community diversity and structure by a number of processes such as soil compaction, erosion, and habitat alteration, among many others. Nonetheless, there is hardly any information on the impact of ecotourism in the Tropical Dry Forests and protected areas of the Neotropical region. In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, the effect of ecotourism was evaluated in a study of a Tropical Dry Forest in the Tayrona National Natural Park of Colombia using dung beetles as bioindicators. A large-scale sampling of three sites with different levels of tourism intensity (no tourism – NT, low tourism – LT, and high tourism – HT) was performed using pitfall tramps baited with human/pig dung during two climatic seasons (rainy and dry). A total of 3238 individuals belonging to nine genera and 15 species were collected. Significant differences in abundances, richness, and the Shannon Wiener diversity index were observed between areas with tourism and those without. These differences disappeared during the dry season in response to the strong reduction in species abundance and richness associated to that time of year. All areas maintained a homogeneous beetle structure in terms of functional groups present irrelevant of the intensity level of tourism. Beta diversity analysis shows that the dung beetle assemblage has a nested structure, indicating that the pressure exerted by tourism entails the loss of particular species. Our results advocate that it is necessary to implement conservation strategies in order to reduce the negative impact of tourism on the National Park’s biodiversity.

生态旅游可以定义为在保存完好的地区进行娱乐活动并负责促进其环境保护的环境活动。如今，生态旅游被视为一种友好的消遣方式，但它可能通过许多过程（例如土壤压实，侵蚀和生境改变）对社区的多样性和结构产生负面影响。但是，几乎没有关于生态旅游对热带干旱森林和新热带地区保护区的影响的信息。为了填补这一知识空白，在一项利用哥伦比亚甲虫作为生物指标的哥伦比亚塔罗纳国家自然公园的热带干旱森林研究中，对生态旅游的影响进行了评估。对三个具有不同旅游强度水平的地点（没有旅游–新台币，在两个气候季节（多雨和干旱），使用被人/猪粪诱倒的陷阱，进行低旅游（LT）和高旅游（HT）活动。总共收集了9个属15种的3238个个体。在有旅游区和无旅游区之间，在丰度，丰富度和香农维纳多样性指数上存在显着差异。这些差异在干旱季节消失，这是由于与一年中那个时候相关的物种丰富度和丰富度的大幅下降。就功能类别而言，所有地区均保持了均一的甲虫结构，而与旅游强度水平无关。Beta多样性分析表明，粪甲虫组合具有嵌套结构，这表明旅游业施加的压力导致特定物种的损失。