Como a estrutura da paisagem afeta as assembleias de rola-bostas em cidades amazônicas?

Abstract

In the world, the growth of cities is one of the main direct and indirect factors responsible for the loss of native vegetation cover. In the Amazon, landscape transformations related to urbanization have been causing the replacement of natural areas by urban landscapes. These changes directly affect the biological communities that reside in forest remnants inserted in cities, compromising the maintenance of urban and natural ecosystems. This work sought to understand how changes in the landscape affect assemblages and functional groups (i.e. diet and resource removal strategy) of dung beetles in cities in Central Amazonia. 38 urban forest fragments were analyzed in six municipalities belonging to the metropolitan region of Manaus, Amazonas. Among the landscape variables analysed (i.e. forest cover, agricultural area, edge density and number of patches around the fragment) forest cover was the most determining factor, negatively affecting species richness, abundance and general body size, and also the different functional groups (i.e. diet and resource removal strategy). Higher edge density positively affected the tunneller functional group. The largest number of fragments negatively affected the abundance of diet generalists, dweller richness and coprophagous body size. These results demonstrate that changes in ecological diversity caused by urbanization are driven by different landscape parameters, and each is exerting pressure on different aspects of assemblages. This study contributes to the understanding of how changes in the amount and distribution of forest cover in tropical cities affects the taxonomic diversity of dung beetles assemblages.