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Climatic variables drive temporal patterns of α and β diversities of dung beetles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2018

S.C. Ferreira Open the ORCID record for S.C. Ferreira [Opens in a new window] ,
P.G. da Silva Open the ORCID record for P.G. da Silva [Opens in a new window] ,
A. Paladini Open the ORCID record for A. Paladini [Opens in a new window]  and
R.A. Di Mare
S.C. Ferreira*
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biodiversidade Animal, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, 97110-970, Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
P.G. da Silva
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Conservação e Manejo da Vida Silvestre, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 31270-910, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
A. Paladini
Affiliation:
Departamento de Ecologia e Evolução, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, 97110-970, Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
R.A. Di Mare
Affiliation:
Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, 97110-970, Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
*
*Author for correspondence Phone: +55 55 32208465 Fax: +55 55 32208000 E-mail: cassenottesheila@gmail.com
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Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms underpinning spatiotemporal diversity patterns of biological communities is a major goal of ecology. We aimed to test two ecological hypotheses: (i) temporal patterns of β-diversity will mostly be driven by nestedness, with a loss of species from summer to winter, and (ii) nestedness values will correlate with climatic variables instead of turnover values, indicating either a loss of species during winter or a gain of species during summer. We sampled dung beetles using standardized sampling protocols along a year in four Atlantic forest sites: two at the northwest and two at the central region of Rio Grande do Sul state, southern Brazil. We partitioned temporal patterns of β-diversity into turnover and nestedness in order to investigate if community changes are driven by species substitution or gain/loss across time. Our results highlighted five main findings: (i) dung beetle composition varied more with sites than site geographic position; (ii) there was almost one and a half ‘true’ dung beetle assemblages regarding the spatial distribution of species weighed by abundance; (iii) we found a positive influence of mean temperature and a negative influence of relative humidity on both species richness and abundance; (iv) both spatial and temporal dissimilarity among sites were dominated by species replacement, while the relative importance of nestedness was higher in temporal than spatial patterns; (v) there was an effect of precipitation and relative humidity on temporal patterns of β-diversity components, but these effects were site-dependent. Contrary to our expectations, the β-diversity component of turnover dominated both spatial and temporal patterns in dung beetle dissimilarity among sites and months. Distinct climatic variables affected differently the α-diversity and β-diversity components of dung beetle assemblages. Partitioning β-diversity into temporal components is a promising approach to unveil patterns of the community dynamics and to produce insights on mechanisms underlying such patterns.

Keywords

Atlantic ForestnestednessScarabaeinaespecies replacementturnover

Information

Type
Research Papers
Information
Bulletin of Entomological Research , Volume 109 , Issue 3 , June 2019 , pp. 390 - 397
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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