Unexpectedly diverse forest dung beetle communities in degraded rain forest landscapes in Madagascar

Tropical forests, which harbor high levels of biodiversity, are being lost at an alarming speed. Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot, has lost more than half of its original forest cover. Most of the remaining forests are small fragments of primary and secondary forest with differing degrees of human impact. These forests, as well as coffee and fruit plantations, may be important in supporting the forest-dependent biodiversity in Madagascar but this has been little studied. In Madagascar, dung beetles, which offer important ecosystem services, are largely restricted to forests. We examined the ability of fragmented and degraded forests to support dung beetle diversity, compared to the large areas of primary forest in eastern Madagascar. We found a general trend of a reduction of species with a loss of forest connectivity. In contrast, a higher level of forest disturbance was associated with higher species diversity. In several sites of low-quality forest as many or more species were found as in less disturbed and primary forests. The average size of dung beetles was smaller in the lower quality localities than in the primary forests. These findings suggest that many forest dung beetles in Madagascar are better adapted to forest disturbance than earlier expected, although they require some level of connectivity to surrounding forest. in Malagasy is available with online material.Peer reviewe

Annotated record of the detailed examination of Mn deposits from DSDP Hole 134E, Leg 13 (Core 126-2)

The western margin of Sardinia (had been explored in the Spring of 1970 by the R/V Jean Charcot of CNEXO. It showed that the basement ridge west of Sardinia lies at the very distal edge of the continental slope and has effectively dammed an upslope sedimentary basin which is presently isolated from the Balearic Abyssal Plain. Consequently a series of holes was contemplated along an east to west transverse of the Charcot profile