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Rainfall seasonality drives the spatiotemporal patterns of dung beetles in Amazonian forests in the arc of deforestation

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Abstract

The Amazon Rainforest is facing high rates of deforestation, leaving anthropogenically dominated landscapes across the Amazon. Understanding the biodiversity response to the effects of rainfall seasonality can provide important examples of how species may respond to drastic climate conditions in anthropogenic landscapes. Here, we sampled dung beetles across the same Amazon forest sites during the rainy and dry seasons to evaluate the effect of seasonality on biodiversity patterns. We found a significant space–time interaction for the whole set of forest sites indicating that the spatial structure of the species abundance data has changed significantly between seasons. Dung beetle abundance and species richness was higher in the rainy season when evaluating all species and separately for nesting behavior group. For presence-absence and abundance data of the whole assemblage, the mean differences between losses and gains over all forest sites was negative, indicating dominance of species and individuals-per-species losses across all forest sites. Eleven species (5 tunnellers, 4 rollers, and 2 dwellers) had significant decreases in abundances in the forest sites from the rainy to the dry season, whereas one roller species increased in abundance from the rainy to the dry season. Rainfall seasonality drives the temporal patterns of dung beetle diversity in the Amazonian forests in the study region in the arc of deforestation.

Implications for insect conservation

Understanding species vulnerability to changes in climatic conditions could help to predict species distributions in an increased scenario of higher temperatures and longer drought periods during dry seasons in the near future.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Fernando Z. Vaz-de-Mello (UFMT) for the dung beetle identification. CMAC thanks Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior ‘Bolsista CAPES/Brasil’ for postdoctoral grant (Process 88887.603414/2021-00). PGdS thanks CAPES/Brasil for postdoctoral grant (Process 88882.316025/2019-01, Code 001). The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests.

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  1. César M. A. Correa

    Present address: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação da Biodiversidade, Laboratório de Scarabaeoidologia, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, 78060-900, Brazil

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Estadual de Mato Grosso do Sul, Aquidauana, Mato Grosso do Sul, 79200-000, Brazil

    César M. A. Correa

  2. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, 31330-572, Brazil

    Pedro G. da Silva

  3. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Rondônia, Colorado do Oeste, Mato Grosso, 76993-000, Brazil

    Anderson Puker

  4. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Mato Grosso, Guarantã do Norte, Mato Grosso, 78520-000, Brazil

    Rodrigo L. Gil & Kleyton R. Ferreira

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Correa, C.M.A., da Silva, P.G., Puker, A. et al. Rainfall seasonality drives the spatiotemporal patterns of dung beetles in Amazonian forests in the arc of deforestation. J Insect Conserv 25, 453–463 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-021-00313-y

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