Browsing by Subject "habitat fragmentation"

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the diversity and species composition of dung beetle (Scarabaeinae) communities in degraded rainforest landscapes in southeastern Madagascar. Several studies elsewhere in the world have revealed that forest-dwelling dung beetle communities and especially large species suffer from forest degradation and fragmentation by decreased species diversity. The most important factors affecting community structure of forest-dwelling dung beetles are habitat area, connectivity and vegetation quality i.e. microclimate. The hypothesis of this study was that the situation is the same in Madagascar. As dung beetles provide several important ecosystem services, like nutrient cycling and bioturbation, loss of dung beetle diversity imposes a secondary threat to the extraordinary nature of Madagascar by decreasing the regeneration ability of vegetation. Material for the study was collected in forest fragments of different size and quality between two areas of primary tropical rainforest – Ranomafana National Park and Vatovavy mountain – in November and December 2011 and January 2012. The sampling was conducted by transects of 30–60 fish- or carrion-baited pitfall traps which were set up in 55 localities in the study area. In each locality, several variables were measured to describe the vegetation and microclimatic conditions. The variables included temperature, humidity, estimate of vegetation quality by 6 observation-based classes, vegetation density, hights of three clearly visible vegetation layers, altitude and slope steepness. In addition, connectivities were measured for the localities using GIS and a satellite image –based vegetation classification. In order to demonstrate the differences between certain localities the study sites were divided into seven zones in terms of their distance from the Ranomafana National Park, average connectivity of the transects and elevation. Altogether 4,199 individuals belonging to 24 species were collected. Six of the species are currently under identification process in the Paris Museum of Natural History. According to the preliminary results they include two species new to science. Largest numbers of species were collected from good quality fragments between Ranomafana and Vatovavy. Also, a clear transition zone in species composition was detected a few kilometers west from Vatovavy, where altitude changes sharply. The study reveals that the species assemblages in the forest fragments and degraded forest areas are surprisingly species rich. This may, however, be partly because of extinction debt, and many of the still surviving species may soon die out due to restricted dispersal possibilities. Connectivity and vegetation quality were shown to have an effect on Canthonini species richness, with less species in less connected areas and lower vegetation quality. Vegetation quality was also shown to have an impact on the proportions of species with different body length: more small and medium-sized (< 8 mm) species were found in fragments where vegetation was more degraded. In addition to revealing how rainforest fragmentation and degradation affect local communities, the study gives interesting information about the distribution of certain species of Epilissus (Scarabaeinae: Canthonini). It has been known before that four species of Epilissus show elevational differentiation in their occurrence in Ranomafana. In this study, two more species of the same genus, E. prasinus and E. emmae obscurpennis, were shown to continue this pattern in lower elevations near Vatovavy mountain, about 50 kilometers east of Ranomafana.