COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE OF DUNG BEETLES ASSEMBLAGE (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) IN TWO FOREST FRAGMENTS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTIOQUIA

• Main Authors: Argemiro Arturo Vargas-Pérez, Diego Esteban Martínez-Revelo
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, sede Medellín 2016-07-01
• Series: Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias
• Subjects: Bioindicadores; Diversidad verdadera; Fragmentación; represa del río Porce.
• Online Access: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/rfc/article/view/60089

The landscape transformation by human intervention generates forest fragments with different size and shape, which are immersed in a matrix of pastures. This transformation impact to local diversity, particularly in species with higher ecological requirements. A first approximation to measure the impact on the biological communities is to know their structure and composition into the landscape, for this reason, this paper describes the changes in the structure and composition of dung beetles in two fragments of forest with different size in the Porce river, this fragments are at 200 meters of distance. The dung beetles were sampled during two days in April 2016, using pitfall traps baited with human feces. A Total of 217 individuals belonging to nine genera and 15 species were captured. It was observed that the richness was similar between the fragments and there was no significant differences in terms of diversity based on the effective number of species. However, the composition differed between fragments, showing three species unique in the largest forest fragment against one species in the smallest fragment. The results indicate that proximity between fragments allows the movement of species, this suggests the importance of keeping the continuity forest corridors for the dung beetles conservation in a regional scale.