Evaluación de comunidades de escarabajos coprófagos como indicadores ecológicos de los remanentes boscosos en la Reserva Forestal Protectora de Vanguardia, en el Municipio de Villavicencio, Meta (Colombia)

Abstract

In the present work, the richness of coprophagous beetle species in remnant forest was determined at one area with different ecological conditions: primary old forest, fragmented forest and deforested areas within the Vanguardia Natural Forest Reserve at Villavicencio´s City. In each of them we made three samples, each sample consisted of a transect of 1 km, with pitfall traps, baited with cow and human feces, and in each transect five traps used cow feces and five with Human stool; those traps were interspersed. The collected specimens will be identified until gender level. Wealth indices such as Chao and Jackknife are calculated, indices of diversity and dominance such as Shannon-Wierner and Simpson to calculate the variety of genres in the study area; similarly, the relationship and similarity of the samples is identified through the Jaccard index. The sampling effort was divided to collect 194 specimens belonging to 14 genders of the Scarabaeidae family that represents between 82 and 100% of the genera present in the area according to the estimates of Jacknife and Chao, respectively. It was found that in the primary old forest and at fragmented forest. At deforested area we just found three of the 14 genders and indicators of low species richness, but higher dominance. In the forested areas, the genders called Gromphas and Eurysternus, which are typical in places with good conditions; Those genders were found in abundance, the number of catches became the area of extensive primary forest, and in the zone of fragmented forest, these genders were not found. Sylvicanthon, which is a genus that best adapts to all types of conditions, has been found in all of the areas. It was found that all of genders were collected in traps with cow or human feces; However, in the traps with the number of individuals captured was much more important.