The role of body size and shape in understanding competitive interactions within a community of Neotropical dung beetles
1Departamento de Ecologia e Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Caixa Postal 476, Florianópolis,
SC, Brazil 88010-970
2Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, United Kingdom
3Instituto de Ecología A.C., Apartado Postal 63, Xalapa, 91000, Veracruz, Mexico
Abstract
Geometric morphometrics is helpful for understanding how body size and body shape influence the strength of inter-specific competitive interactions in a community. Dung beetles, characterized by their use of decomposing organic material, provide a useful model for understanding the structuring of ecological communities and the role of competition based on their size and morphology. The relationship between body size and shape in a dung beetle community from the Atlantic Forest in Serra do Japi, Brazil was analyzed for 39 species. Fifteen anatomical landmarks on three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates were used to describe both the shape and the size of the body of each species on the basis of the centroid located along homologous points in all of the species. The first vector of a principal components analysis explained 38.5% of the morphological variation among species, and represents a gradient of body shape from elongated, flattened bodies with narrow abdomen to rounded or convex bodies. The second component explained 17.8% of the remaining variation in body shape, which goes from species with an abdomen that is larger than the elytra to species with constricted abdomens and large elytra. The relationship between body size and shape was analyzed separately for diurnal and nocturnal species. In both guilds not only were there differences in body size, but also in body shape, suggesting a reduction in their level of competition.
Keywords: Brazil, Coleoptera, geometric morphometrics, inter-specific competition, Scarabaeinae
Correspondence:
amalvamh@ccb.ufsc.br,
bL.Monteiro@hull.ac.uk,
cmario.favila@inecol.edu.mx
Received: 21 June 2009 | Accepted: 3 November 2009 | Published: 4 February 2011
Copyright: This is an open access paper. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license that permits unrestricted use, provided that the paper is properly attributed.
ISSN: 1536-2442 | Volume 11, Number 13
Hernández MIM, Monteiro LR, Favila ME. 2011. The role of body size and shape in understanding competitive interactions within a community of Neotropical dung beetles. Journal of Insect Science 11:13 available online: insectscience.org/11.13
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