Species composition of dung beetles

Species composition of dung beetles Change of habitat types has a tremendous effect on species composition. An ordination technique aimed to compare dung beetles community at habitat studied showed a higher distance between open area and natural forest, agroforestry cacao and annual culture compared to the distance among those three latter habitats (Figure 3). This result indicated that the structure of dung beetle communities differed between forest habitats and land-use systems. However, the dung beetle species did not appear to be restricted to only one habitat type causing a high overlap of the species composition between all sites (similar to the results from the community analysis using Sørensen indices). Of the 20 species recorded at forest sites, 60% (= 12 species) were also found at the cacao plantations. Although four of Onthophagus sp. and one of Aphodius sp. were only recorded at forest site they all could not be categorized as “forest-dependent species” since their abundance were very low (1 specimen per species) and those species could be collected in other landuse type if the sampling period was longer. Moreover, if the singleton was excludes about 90% of the species recorded at forest sites were also occurs at the cacao plantation. This species distribution indicating the high potential of agroforestry system for supporting the dung beetles diversity at the landscape level. Nevertheless, the contribution of agroforestry to the dung beetles (and overall) diversity depend on some factors such us management of shaded tree and the distance to the nearby forest (Bos et al. 2007; Clough et al. 2009).