Open AccessTesting for seasonal displacement in a dung beetle guild
Author(s) -
Palmer Miquel
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
ecography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.973
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1600-0587
pISSN - 0906-7590
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0587.1995.tb00338.x
Subject(s) - guild , interspecific competition , competition (biology) , abundance (ecology) , ecology , biology , dung beetle , habitat , scarabaeidae
The temporal overlap between seasonal distribution of adults of 14 congeneric dung beetle species ( Aphodius spp) was determined during one year, based on 11122 captures The mean seasonal distribution of adults (mean of the sampling dates weighted by the abundance value) was analyzed to elucidate deviations from ram‐domness In addition, the effect of the shape of seasonal distribution of adults was investigated In both analyses randomization methods were used A clear trend exists maximizing the temporal displacement between middle points of chronologically consecutive species newly emerging species appear every 26 ± 16 days This trend minimizes the number of species pairs with no or very little temporal overlap In contrast, the mean temporal overlap of the whole guild seems unaffected, with some species pairs showing a large temporal overlap Whether the observed pattern can be attributed to interspecific competition must be addresed experimentally