Local and landscape prospects for the dung beetle conservation in tropical fragmented landscapes: an atlantic forest essay

Abstract

Habitat loss and land use changes are some of the most threats for biodiversity in tropical landscapes. Because of this, it is important investigate what the influence that modified ecosystem presents on native diversity. In addition, these effects should be assessed in distinct scales since different scales bring a variety of information that it is helpful in the conservation strategies development. Therefore, this thesis has aimed to evaluate, at local and landscape scales, the effects of land use change on dung beetles communities in Atlantic Forest domain. In the first chapter, we investigated at local scale which modified ecosystems might help in native species conservation and whether the alteration level of this ecosystem has any influence in its conservation value. We found that Eucalyptus plantations have greater conservation value than pastures for forest species. The hybrid condition of these ecosystems allows an improvement of this conservation value if they are properly managed. In the second chapter, using a landscape approach, we found that forest dung beetles are more sensitiveness to habitat loss than dung beetles associated with pastures. We also found that landscape heterogeneity can influence positively the abundance of these forest communities. Dung beetles sampled in pasture sites did not respond to landscape attributes, evidencing that these dung beetle communities might be more related to local scale variables or biogeographic factors. With these results, we conclude that dung beetles are an excellent group to test ecological hypothesis related to biodiversity conservation in both local and landscape scale. Also, we highlight that native forests have an incomparable and irreplaceable conservation value and their destruction has led to species extinctions. Exotic pastures placed in Atlantic Forest region have a low conservation value and Eucalyptus plantations could be more useful. Finishing, we emphasize that it is fundamental investigate matrix components in order to understand the real effects of distinct land use on biological diversity living in human-modified landscapes.