Journal
JOURNAL OF INSECT CONSERVATION
Volume 20, Issue 6, Pages 957-970Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10841-016-9928-0
Keywords
Brazilian savanna; Sugarcane; Pasture; Eucalyptus; Akaike's Information Criterion
Categories
Funding
- Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)
- National Council for Scientiic and Technological Development (CNPq)
- Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
- CNPq [312045/2013-1]
- FAPESP [2013/50421-2]
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The Edge Influence is one of the most pervasive effects of habitat fragmentation, as many forest remnants in anthropogenic landscapes are within 100 m of edges. Forest remnants may also affect the surrounding anthropogenic matrix, possibly resulting in a matrix-edge-remnant diversity gradient for some species groups. We sampled dung beetles in 15 agricultural landscapes using pitfall traps placed along transects in matrix-edge-remnant gradients. The remnants were a native savanna-like vegetation, the cerrado, and the matrix was composed of three human-dominated environments (sugarcane, eucalyptus, pasture). More species were observed in cerrado remnants than in adjacent land uses. Dung beetles were also more abundant in the cerrado than in the landscape matrix of sugarcane and eucalypt, but not of pasture. Dung beetles were severely affected by anthropogenic land uses, and notwithstanding their high abundance in some land uses such as pasture, the species richness in these areas tended to be smaller than in the cerrado remnants. We also found that the influence of the edge was evident only for abundance, particularly in landscapes with a pasture matrix. However, this land use disrupts the species composition of communities, indicating that communities located in cerrado and pasture have a distinct species composition, and that both communities are affected by edge distance. Thus, anthropogenic land uses may severely affect dung beetles, and this impact can extend to communities located in cerrado remnants as well as to those in matrices, with possible consequences for ecological processes such as decomposition and nutrient cycling.
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