Resposta da diversidade funcional de Scarabaeinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) aos diferentes usos de solo na Amazônia

Abstract

Society is in need of maintaining environmental functions and services and, to this end, a science focused on functional diversity is being developed. This work has investigated the response of Scarabaeinae functional diversity in relation to the different soil uses in the Rio Jari bacin, in the Amazon. Beetles were collected in primary forests (forest), selective logging (logging), forest corridor (corridor), secondary forest (capoeira) and Eucalyptus monoculture (eucalyptus). The traits used were: activity period, perch, diet, resource allocation and biomass. Based on these attributes the following indexes were calculated: functional dispersion (FDis), functional evenness (FEve) and functional richness based on the dendogram (FRic). Functional groups were formed by the Ward method: these presented species from the same genus as well as from a distinct genus, probably due to niche conservation and phenotypic convergence caused by the environment, respectively. FDis as well as FRic showed similarities between corridor, logging and forest and similarities between capoeira and eucalyptus, with these two groups being different. This is related to the similarity between the communities of these grouped systems and consequently, the maintenance of functionality. As for the FEve index, there was no difference between the soil uses, probably because this index considers the distance between locations on the multidimensional space. However, the gain or loss of a species may increase the volume of occupied space, but maintain the relation of distance between the attributes. Apparently the corridor and the logging maintained functionality similar to the forest while the eucalyptus and the capoeira presented reductions in the evaluated functional indexes. A loss, or at least a reduction, pattern of abundance and richness occurred of functional groups with attributes of larger sensibility between the soil uses, mainly those which presented perch. The soil uses follow a increasing order of disturbance: logging, corridor, capoeira and eucalyptus. Logging and corridor were very close. Despite tending to different responses, the corridor tends to present a functional response equal to that of the capoeira. The use of the functional groups as indicators was efficient, however, this was a response to the sensibility of these and the system’s capacity to support sensitive species.