Abstract

Tropical forests, which harbor high levels of biodiversity, are being lost at an alarming speed. Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot, has lost more than half of its original forest cover. Most of the remaining forests are small fragments of primary and secondary forest with differing degrees of human impact. These forests, as well as coffee and fruit plantations, may be important in supporting the forest-dependent biodiversity in Madagascar but this has been little studied. In Madagascar, dung beetles, which offer important ecosystem services, are largely restricted to forests. We examined the ability of fragmented and degraded forests to support dung beetle diversity, compared to the large areas of primary forest in eastern Madagascar. We found a general trend of a reduction of species with a loss of forest connectivity. In contrast, a higher level of forest disturbance was associated with higher species diversity. In several sites of low-quality forest as many or more species were found as in less disturbed and primary forests. The average size of dung beetles was smaller in the lower quality localities than in the primary forests. These findings suggest that many forest dung beetles in Madagascar are better adapted to forest disturbance than earlier expected, although they require some level of connectivity to surrounding forest.in Malagasy is available with online material.

Keywords

Canthonini; fragmentation; habitat loss; Helictopleurina; land use change; Scarabaeinae; tropical wet forest

Published in

Biotropica
2020, Volume: 52, number: 2, pages: 351-365
Publisher: WILEY

SLU Authors

• Torppa, Kaisa

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of Helsinki

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.12767

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/105214