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Patterns of abundance and movement in relation to landscape structure: a study of a common scarab (Canthon cyanellus cyanellus) in Southern Mexico

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Abstract

Few relevant data are available to analyze how landscape features affect the abundance and movement patterns of tropical insects. We used mark-release-recapture techniques to study the effects of landscape structure and composition on habitat preferences and movements of Canthon cyanellus cyanellus individuals, within a complex tropical deciduous forest landscape in South Mexico during 2004 and 2005. In total, 2,460 individuals of C. c. cyanellus were captured, including 1,225 females and 1,235 males, out of which 124 individuals (65 females and 59 males) were recaptured once, and 9 individuals (seven females and two males) were recaptured twice. The abundance of individuals was equally high in large forest fragments, small forest fragments and hedgerows, but the abundance in pastures was less than half of the abundance in the other habitat types. To disentangle the movement behaviour of the species from the spatially and temporally varying sampling effort, we applied a Bayesian state-space modelling framework with a diffusion based movement model. Males showed generally faster movement rate than females, and they moved faster within forests and hedgerows than within pastures. Contrary to the assumption of the diffusion model, individuals did not move in a continuous fashion, indicated by the large fraction of individuals that were recaptured in the site of release. However, the posterior predictive data did not deviate substantially from the real data in terms of the mean and maximum movement distances recorded, and in terms of the dependence of movement distance on time between captures. Our results suggest that an important component of the biota in Mexican agro-pasture landscapes can utilize contemporary landscape elements such as hedgerows or small forest fragments in addition to large fragments of remnant habitat. These habitats are still locally common in semi-natural ecosystems and require less intensive conservation management.

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Acknowledgements

Ubaldo Caballero, José Alonso, Manuel Girón, Karla Leal, Arcángel Molina, Francisco Pérez, Francisco Rosas, Guadalupe Ramírez, and Yariely Balam helped in the field. We thank Norma E. Corona and Marissa Mora Acosta for their help with ortophoto analysis and to Carmen Huerta and Imelda Martínez for support in the lab (Instituto de Ecología, A. C.) We are very grateful to Vicente Jiménez and Reinalda Hernández for allowing us access to their land. This study was supported by CONABIO-Mexico (grant BE012), CONACYT-Mexico (grant J35230-V, 37514-V). O. Ovaskainen was supported by the Academy of Finland (grants 213457 and 211173). The first author is grateful to SEP-CONACYT for a doctoral grant (175987), and to El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Unidad San Cristóbal and Instituto de Ecología, A. C., Xalapa, Veracruz, for their support during the development of this work. Gonzalo Halffter and Mario Favila made valuable comments to early drafts of this paper. We thank two anonymous referees for their careful review to a first version of the manuscript, and to Scott Belser for correcting our English.

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  1. Departamento de Ecología y Sistemática Terrestre, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur., Carretera Panamericana y Av. Periférico Sur s/n, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, 29290, Mexico

    Lucrecia Arellano & Jorge L. León-Cortés

  2. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Ecología Animal, Instituto de Ecología, A. C., Apartado Postal 63, Xalapa, Veracruz, 91000, Mexico

    Lucrecia Arellano

  3. Metapopulation Research Group, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 65, Viikinkaari 1, Helsinki, 00014, Finland

    Otso Ovaskainen

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  1. Lucrecia Arellano
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  2. Jorge L. León-Cortés
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Correspondence to Lucrecia Arellano.

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Arellano, L., León-Cortés, J.L. & Ovaskainen, O. Patterns of abundance and movement in relation to landscape structure: a study of a common scarab (Canthon cyanellus cyanellus) in Southern Mexico. Landscape Ecol 23, 69–78 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-007-9165-8

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