Understanding patterns of tropical forest resilience is a central challenge in conservation ecology particularly in seasonally-dry tropical forests, where anthropogenic disturbance and climate change are pervasive threats. Here, we investigate the recovery rate and community organization of dung beetles along a Caatinga dry forest regeneration cline in the context of slash-and-burn agriculture in northeast Brazil. Assemblages were described considering a wide set of attributes, including abundance, taxonomic (Hill orders D⁰, D¹ and D²) and functional diversity (functional richness, evenness and redundancy) and taxonomic/functional composition, across a chronosequence consisting of regenerating and old-growth forest stands exposed to different levels of aridity and chronic disturbance. In addition, we use body mass, diet, food relocation behaviour and habitat specificity of dung beetles as ecological attributes. Our results show that Caatinga dry forests supports dense but relatively impoverished dung beetle assemblages at both local and landscape scales, with the same small set of species dominating local assemblages. Dung beetles do not experience successional replacements along the regeneration gradient, with evidence of high resilience. Moreover, disturbance-associated dung beetle species (predominantly small-bodied generalists) resulted in assemblage convergence across the regeneration cline. Finally, chronic anthropogenic disturbance was a decisive driver of changes in abundance and taxonomic diversity, while aridity positively affected species composition and functional richness. These patterns resulted in the occurrence of spatially structured assemblages in response to a combination of both natural and anthropogenic variables, while under little or no influence of forest regeneration status across human-modified Caatinga landscapes. We conclude that the absence of directional changes in dung beetle assemblages through the forest succession pathway of regenerating second-growth forest is associated with the effect of aridity and human disturbances on community organization, including selection for certain species and functional groups, which in turn, can alter important ecological functions and consequently the resilience of dry forests.

了解热带森林恢复力的模式是保护生态学的核心挑战，特别是在季节性干旱的热带森林中，人为干扰和气候变化是普遍威胁。在这里，我们研究甲虫的回收率和社区组织沿刀耕火种农业在巴西东北部的背景下卡丁加群落干旱森林再生渐变群。被描述考虑广泛的属性集，包括丰富，分类组合（山订单ð ⁰，d ¹和d ²）和功能多样性（功能丰富度，均匀度和冗余）和分类/功能组合物，穿过一个年代序列由再生和老龄林分暴露于不同水平的干旱和慢性紊乱的。此外，我们用体重，饮食，食品拆迁行为和甲虫生态属性的栖息地特异性。我们的研究结果表明，卡丁加群落干燥森林支持密集，但相对贫困的粪便在地方和景观尺度甲虫组合，与同组小种主导本地组合的。蜣螂不沿再生梯度体验连续性替代，具有高弹性的证据。而且，干扰相关蜣螂物种（主要是小健全通才）导致整个再生cline的组合收敛。最后，慢性人为干扰是丰度和分类多样性变化的决定性驱动因素，而干旱对物种组成和功能丰富度产生积极影响。这些模式导致空间结构组合的响应自然和人为变量的组合发生，同时整个人改性卡丁加群落景观森林再生状态几乎没有影响。我们的结论是没有通过再生次生林的森林演替途径蜣螂组合方向变化与干旱的影响，对社区组织的人为干扰有关，