Global dung webs: high trophic generalism of dung beetles along the latitudinal diversity gradient |
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| Authors: | Kevin Frank Frank‐Thorsten Krell Eleanor M. Slade Elizabeth H. Raine Li Yuen Chiew Thomas Schmitt Charles S. Vairappan Philippe Walter Nico Blüthgen |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Ecological Networks, Department of Biology, Technische Universit?t Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany;2. Department of Zoology, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, Colorado, USA;3. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK;4. Lancaster Environment Centre, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, UK;5. Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, University Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, Sabah, Malaysia;6. Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany;7. Laboratoire d'Endocrinologie des Insectes, Faculté des Sciences, Université de Nantes, Nantes Cedex 03, France;8. , Montségur, France |
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| Abstract: | At the global scale, species diversity is known to strongly increase towards the equator for most taxa. According to theory, a higher resource specificity of consumers facilitates the coexistence of a larger number of species and has been suggested as an explanation for the latitudinal diversity gradient. However, only few studies support the predicted increase in specialisation or even showed opposite results. Surprisingly, analyses for detritivores are still missing. Therefore, we performed an analysis on the degree of trophic specialisation of dung beetles. We summarised 45 studies, covering the resource preferences of a total of 994503 individuals, to calculate the dung specificity in each study region. Our results highlighted a significant (4.3‐fold) increase in the diversity of beetles attracted to vertebrate dung towards the equator. However, their resource specificity was low, unrelated to diversity and revealed a highly generalistic use of dung resources that remained similar along the latitudinal gradient. |
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| Keywords: | Biodiversity brown food web dung beetles Scarabaeoidea ecological networks meta analysis latitudinal diversity gradient |
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