Dung Beetle Community and Functions along a Habitat-Disturbance Gradient in the Amazon: A Rapid Assessment of Ecological Functions Associated to Biodiversity
Dung Beetle Community and Functions along a Habitat-Disturbance Gradient in the Amazon: A Rapid Assessment of Ecological Functions Associated to Biodiversity
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0057786
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发表时间：
2013-02-27
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Louzada, Julio
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Braga, Rodrigo F.;Korasaki, Vanesca;Louzada, Julio
虽然人们越来越关注生境干扰对群落属性的影响以及对生态系统功能的潜在后果，但将生物多样性丧失与功能丧失联系起来的客观方法并不常见。本研究的目的是同时评估群落属性（丰富度、丰度和生物量，分别针对总甲虫群落以及小型和大型甲虫群落计算）和金龟子的三种生态功能（粪便清除、土壤扰动和二次种子传播），比较栖息地干扰对两组响应变量的影响及其关系。我们研究了蜣螂社区的属性和功能，在巴西亚马逊河流域的干扰梯度的五个土地利用系统：原始森林，次生林，农林业，农业和牧场。所有的响应变量的栖息地干扰制度的加剧产生负面影响，但社区属性和生态功能并没有遵循相同的模式下降。层次划分分析表明，除小甲虫丰度对3种生态功能的影响和小甲虫生物量对大种子模拟物二次扩散的影响外，所有群落属性对3种生态功能均有显著影响，但物种丰富度和大甲虫丰度是解释价值最高的群落属性。我们的研究结果表明，测量生态功能的重要性，而不是推断它从社区指标。
Although there is increasing interest in the effects of habitat disturbance on community attributes and the potential consequences for ecosystem functioning, objective approaches linking biodiversity loss to functional loss are uncommon. The objectives of this study were to implement simultaneous assessment of community attributes (richness, abundance and biomass, each calculated for total-beetle assemblages as well as small-and large-beetle assemblages) and three ecological functions of dung beetles (dung removal, soil perturbation and secondary seed dispersal), to compare the effects of habitat disturbance on both sets of response variables, and their relations. We studied dung beetle community attributes and functions in five land-use systems representing a disturbance gradient in the Brazilian Amazon: primary forest, secondary forest, agroforestry, agriculture and pasture. All response variables were affected negatively by the intensification of habitat disturbance regimes, but community attributes and ecological functions did not follow the same pattern of decline. A hierarchical partitioning analysis showed that, although all community attributes had a significant effect on the three ecological functions (except the abundance of small beetles on all three ecological functions and the biomass of small beetles on secondary dispersal of large seed mimics), species richness and abundance of large beetles were the community attributes with the highest explanatory value. Our results show the importance of measuring ecological function empirically instead of deducing it from community metrics.