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Short‐term temporal variability in the abundance of tropical dung beetles
Author(s) -
ANDRESEN ELLEN
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
insect conservation and diversity
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.061
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1752-4598
pISSN - 1752-458X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-4598.2008.00013.x
Subject(s) - dung beetle , abundance (ecology) , biology , ecology , biodiversity , habitat , tropics , taxon , sampling (signal processing) , scarabaeinae , relative species abundance , period (music) , scarabaeidae , filter (signal processing) , computer science , computer vision , physics , acoustics
. 1 Dung beetles are increasingly being used as a focal taxon in biodiversity and conservation studies. One of the alleged advantages of these insects is that sampling conducted in a few days can yield accurate data. 2 Dung beetles were collected twice, within a week, in a tropical dry forest in Mexico. The abundance of one species, Onthophagus landolti , increased 16 times in one of the habitats, over a period of a few days. Consequently, conclusions regarding differences between both habitats differed greatly depending on which sampling period was considered. 3 Short‐term temporal variability in the abundance of dung beetles, particularly if spatially asymmetric, must carefully be considered when designing sampling protocols for this group of insects in dry tropical forests.