Influência de características ambientais sobre a comunidade de Scarabaeinae (Coleoptera:Scarabaeidae) em florestas tropicais secas

Abstract

The main goal in ecology is to understand the diverse factors that can influence the distribution patterns of diversity and the dynamics of organisms, as well as the mechanisms that determine them. Some of these factors are forest fragmentation, environmental heterogeneity, rainfall and soil physical factors. The Tropical Dry Forest (TDFs) shows the highest annual rate deforestation between rainforest. Despite of the intensification conservation efforts, there is still very large gap knowledge about these plant formations and the relation with the fauna groups present there. Beetles of the subfamily Scarabaeinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) are important elements on nutrient cycling, in soil aeration, as secondary seed dispersers and reducing parasites present in feces of mammals. This study had the objective to explore some of the different factors that can determine the diversity of Scarabaeinae in TDFs for that were tested: i: hypothesis of habitat heterogeneity, Influence of soil granulometry on the community of beetles and iii. Season effect on the diversity of dung-beetles. This study was conducted at the Parque Estadual da Lagoa do Cajueiro, in Matias Cardoso city, Serra do Cipó, located in Santana do Riacho. We collected 15.408 individuals, belonging to 57 species. Through building generalized linear models (GLMs) using pseudoreplication space-temporal it was observed that there was no relation between the diversity of beetles with heterogeneity of habitat and soil texture, in contrast, there was significant difference between areas of collects and season.