Changes of dung beetle communities from rainforests towards agroforestry systems and annual cultures in Sulawesi (Indonesia)

By Shahabuddin, C. Schulze, T. Tscharntke. Biodiversity and Conservation, 2005

102 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Little is known about how tropical land-use systems contribute to the conservation of functionally important insect groups, including dung beetles. In a study at the margin of Lore Lindu National Park (a biodiversity hotspot in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia) dung-beetle communities were sampled in natural forest, young secondary forest, agroforestry systems (cacao plantations with shade trees) and annual cultures (maize fields), each with four replicates (n = 16 sites). At each site we used 10 pitfall traps, baited with cattle dung, along a 100 m transect for six 3-day periods. The number of trapped specimens and species richness at the natural forest sites was higher than in all land-use systems, which did not significantly differ. Each land-use system contained, on average, 75% of the species richness of the natural forest, thereby indicating their importance for conservation. However, a two-dimensional scaling plot based on NESS indices (m = 6) indicated distinct dung beetle communities for both forest types, while agroforestry systems and annual cultures exhibited a pronounced overlap. Mean body size of dung beetles was not significantly influenced by land-use intensity. Five of the six most abundant dung beetle species were recorded in all habitats, whereas the abundance of five other species was significantly related to habitat type. Mean local abundance and number of occupied sites were closely correlated, further indicating little habitat specialisation. The low dung beetle diversity (total of 18 recorded species) may be due to the absence of larger mammals in Sulawesi during historical times, even though Sulawesi is the largest island of Wallacea. In conclusion, the dung beetle fauna of the lower montane forest zone in Central Sulawesi appears to be relatively robust to man-made habitat changes and the majority of species did not exhibit strong habitat preferences.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/78770d776f0262afde220d9f48eafe8cf2e15590

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Citations in the corpus

Spatial scale of observation affects α, β and γ diversity of cavity‐nesting bees and wasps across a tropical land‐use gradient (2006, background): “In general, more natural habitats tend to exhibit higher biodiversity of a variety of insect taxa (Mas & Dietsch, 2003; Shahabuddin et al., 2005).”
BIODIVERSITY INDICATOR GROUPS OF TROPICAL LAND‐USE SYSTEMS: COMPARING PLANTS, BIRDS, AND INSECTS (2004, background): “E-mail: ttschar@gwdg.de 2000, Liow et al. 2001, Costa and Magnusson 2002, Thompson et al. 2002) or guilds (e.g., Canaday 1996, Beck and Schulze 2000, Fermon et al. 2000, Fermon 2002, Waltert et al. 2004, Schulze et al. 2004, Shahabuddin et al. 2004).”
Global dung beetle response to tropical forest modification and fragmentation: A quantitative literature review and meta-analysis (2007, background): “Scheffler, 2005, Vulinec, 2000 and Vulinec et al., 2006 all found little change in beetle biomass between intact and selectively logged forests and Shahabuddin et al. (2005) reported no overall difference in biomass between early secondary and intact forest.”
The contribution of cacao agroforests to the conservation of lower canopy ant and beetle diversity in Indonesia (2007, methodology): “Such threats are known to occur in conversions to zero-shade cacao plantations or annual crops (Perfecto et al. 1997; Schulze et al. 2004; Armbrecht et al. 2005; Shahabuddin et al. 2005).”
Multifunctional shade‐tree management in tropical agroforestry landscapes – a review (2011, background): “Shaded cacao and coffee systems are known to support much higher biodiversity than unshaded systems (Schulze et al. 2004; Shahabuddin et al. 2005; Perfecto et al. 2007; Sonwa et al. 2007; Steffan-Dewenter et al. 2007; Cassano et al. 2009; Clough et al. 2010).”