Dung beetles collected using flight intercept traps in an Amazon rainforest fragment and adjacent agroecosystems

Abstract

Dung beetles present a high specificity degree to certain habitat types and they are widely used as bioindicators of environmental changes. Pitfall traps usually baited with human feces are the main method for collecting these insects. However, despite dung beetles being good flyers and actively move in the environment, collections with flight intercept traps have been little used in inventories of these insects in the wild. The fact that the intercept trap usually does not use any attractants, randomly capturing individuals can minimize sampling artifacts related with bait, light or other attractive methods. Here, we use flight intercept traps to analyze the dung beetle assemblages in different habitats in the Amazon rainforest. Dung beetles were sampled weekly from March 2017 to February 2018 in an Amazon forest fragment under anthropic pressure, cupuacu orchard, and exotic pasture in Porto Velho, Rondonia, Brazil. A total of 1041 individuals belonging to 35 species of dung beetles were collected. The species accumulation curve showed no significant difference in the number of species among the three different habitats. The dung beetle species composition found in the forest fragment and cupuacu orchard was similar, but the community of these two habitats was different from the exotic pasture. Our study provides a list of dung beetle species sampled using a method that is still little used in ecological studies using dung beetles as a study model. Finally, the flight intercept trap is a useful tool for dung beetle inventories in different habitats in the Amazon rainforest.