Optimising bait for pitfall trapping of Amazonian dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae)
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Marsh, Charles J
Louzada, Julio
Beiroz, Wallace
Ewers, Robert M
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The accurate sampling of communities is vital to any investigation of ecological processes and biodiversity. Dung beetles have emerged as a widely used focal taxon in environmental studies and can be sampled quickly and inexpensively using baited pitfalls. Although there is now a wealth of available data on dung beetle communities from around the world, there is a lack of standardisation between sampling protocols for accurately sampling dung beetle communities. In particular, bait choice is often led by the idiosyncrasies of the researcher, logistic problems and the dung sources available, which leads to difficulties for inter-study comparisons. In general, human dung is the preferred choice, however, it is often in short supply, which can severely limit sampling effort. By contrast, pigs may produce up to 20 times the volume. We tested the ability of human and pig dung to attract a primary forest dung beetle assemblage, as well as three mixes of the two baits in different proportions. Analyses focussed on the comparability of sampling with pig or human-pig dung mixes with studies that have sampled using human dung. There were no significant differences between richness and abundance sampled by each bait. The assemblages sampled were remarkably consistent across baits, and ordination analyses showed that the assemblages sampled by mixed dung baits were not significantly different from that captured by pure human dung, with the assemblages sampled by 10% and 90% pig mixes structurally most similar to assemblages sampled by human dung. We suggest that a 10:90 human:pig ratio, or similar, is an ideal compromise between sampling efficiency, inter-study comparability and the availability of large quantities of bait for sampling Amazonian dung beetles. Assessing the comparability of assemblage samples collected using different baits represents an important step to facilitating large-scale meta-analyses of dung beetle assemblages collected using non-standard methodology.
Date Issued
2013-08-30
Date Acceptance
2013-07-23
Citation
PLoS One, 2013, 8 (8)
ISSN
1932-6203
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Journal / Book Title
PLoS One
Volume
8
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© 2013 Marsh et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permitsunrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24023675
PII: PONE-D-13-12670
Subjects
Animals
Biodiversity
Brazil
Breeding
Coleoptera
Feces
Humans
Species Specificity
Sus scrofa
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Article Number
ARTN e73147