Carpaneto Giuseppe Maria, Mazziotta Adriano, Ieradi Michele
Department of Environmental Biology, University of Rome Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, I-00146 Rome, Italy.
Environ Entomol. 2010 Dec;39(6):1756-64. doi: 10.1603/EN09249.
In the Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, we compared the scarab beetle assemblages in the dung of three wild ungulates (African buffalo, a ruminant foregut fermenter; hippopotamus, nonruminant foregut fermenter; and warthog, nonruminant hindgut fermenter). Dung was collected from two sandy-clay soils with different percentage of coarse sand. We aimed at investigating habitat resource selection by dung beetle species within a savanna natural contest with abundant and diverse food availability. Analyses were performed to detect differences for dung beetle assemblages in abundance, diversity, functional groups. Species richness in the three dung types and in the two soil types was similar. However, warthog dung and sandy-rich soil appeared the preferred habitat resources, in terms of abundance and biomass, while hippopotamus dung hosted the lowest values for these parameters. The analysis of functional groups revealed that slow-burying tunnellers held the major role, both in terms of abundance and biomass, and were mainly found in warthog dung.
在乌干达的伊丽莎白女王国家公园，我们比较了三种野生有蹄类动物（非洲水牛，一种反刍动物前肠发酵者；河马，非反刍动物前肠发酵者；以及疣猪，非反刍动物后肠发酵者）粪便中的金龟子甲虫群落。粪便采集自两种粗砂含量不同的砂质粘土土壤。我们旨在研究在食物丰富多样的稀树草原自然环境中，金龟子甲虫物种对栖息地资源的选择。进行分析以检测金龟子甲虫群落在丰度、多样性、功能组方面的差异。三种粪便类型和两种土壤类型中的物种丰富度相似。然而，就丰度和生物量而言，疣猪粪便和富含沙子的土壤似乎是首选的栖息地资源，而河马粪便在这些参数方面的值最低。功能组分析表明，无论是在丰度还是生物量方面，慢速掩埋挖掘者都起着主要作用，并且主要在疣猪粪便中发现。
