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Changes in dung beetle communities along a gradient of tropical forest disturbance in South-East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2009

Janice Ser Huay Lee ,
Ian Qian Wei Lee ,
Susan Lee-Hong Lim ,
Johannes Huijbregts  and
Navjot S. Sodhi
Janice Ser Huay Lee*
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Republic of Singapore
Ian Qian Wei Lee
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Republic of Singapore
Susan Lee-Hong Lim
Affiliation:
Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Johannes Huijbregts
Affiliation:
National Museum of Natural History Naturalis, Postbus 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands
Navjot S. Sodhi
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Republic of Singapore
*
1Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Extract

With increasing conversion of South-East Asian forests to human-dominated landscapes, dramatic changes in biodiversity are likely to have ramifications on ecosystem processes (Sodhi & Brook 2006). Dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) have been used to investigate how biodiversity changes affect ecosystem functions (Larsen et al. 2005, Slade et al. 2007). Dung beetles provide important ecosystem services such as dung removal and secondary seed dispersal (Nichols et al. 2008) and have been shown to be reliable indicators of tropical forest disturbance (Gardner et al. 2008, Klein 1989). Here, we determine the effects of forest disturbance on the species richness of dung beetles and ecosystem functions they perform in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. As far as we know, there has been no known study published on dung beetle ecology on the Malay Peninsula. In this study, we test the hypothesis that old-growth forests contain dung beetle communities of higher species richness, abundance, biomass and larger body size. Previous studies have shown that changes in dung beetle communities have the potential to disrupt ecosystem services in natural habitats (Larsen et al. 2005, Mittal 1993). We also investigate whether dung removal is affected by forest disturbance and test the hypothesis that dung removal is reduced in more disturbed forests compared with less-disturbed forests.

Keywords

biodiversityecosystem servicesMalay PeninsulaScarabaeidaetropical forests
Type
Short Communication
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 25 , Issue 6 , November 2009 , pp. 677 - 680
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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