Abstract
Unplanned and invasive use of natural resources can have irreversible implications for the environment. Appropriate strategies for adequate management could have utmost importance for the conservation of biodiversity. Environments that harbor a huge structural complexity, such as agroforestry systems, even the simplest ones, may host a high species diversity and may therefore ensure the provision of important ecological services. To examine the effect of vegetation structure loss by land use simplification on biodiversity, we evaluate dung beetle (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) diversity in different land uses, considering: Brazilian Atlantic Forest, cacao-rubber agroforestry, and rubber monoculture. We found a decreasing gradient of dung beetle diversity from forest to monoculture, as cacao-rubber agroforestry maintaining an intermediate level of dung beetle diversity that is lower than that of the native forest but significantly higher than rubber monoculture. Species composition is rather similar when comparing forest and agroforestry, whereas monoculture holds a different assemblage. Although monoculture farming is still encouraged by the agribusiness market, our results support the idea that agroforestry is a reasonable option to be considered and adapted to compensate the deleterious effects of agriculture intensification on dung beetle diversity. We suggest that such land use would be the best choice to ensure dung beetle diversity maintenance in agricultural landscapes.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Michelin for providing infrastructure and access to the reserve, in particular Kevin Flesher, Mr. André, and Ms. Ester. We are grateful to the State University of Santa Cruz – UESC for supporting the field course in Ecology at Michelin Reserve. We especially thank professors: Deborah Faria, Larissa Rocha, Luiz Magnago, Maíra Benchimol, José Morante-Filho, Camila Cassano, Pavel Dodonov, and our field course partners, who kindly provided us with “organic material” to make so efficient the pitfall trap baits. We thank Lucía Rodríguez-Tricot for comments on previous versions of the manuscript. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. We thank Fernando Vaz-De-Mello for help in confirming the species identification.
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The first author acknowledges the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado da Bahia – FAPESB, for his master-degree fellowship. JHCD acknowledges his research grant to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPQ.
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Reis, C., Zarucki, M., Delabie, J. et al. Biodiversity impacts of land use simplification: a case study of dung beetles in a landscape of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Int J Trop Insect Sci 43, 2045–2056 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-023-01106-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-023-01106-3