Deforestation and apparent extinctions of endemic forest beetles in Madagascar

Madagascar has lost about half of its forest cover since 1953 with much regional variation, for instance most of the coastal lowland forests have been cleared. We sampled the endemic forest-dwelling Helictopleurini dung beetles across Madagascar during 2002–2006. Our samples include 29 of the 51 previously known species for which locality information is available. The most significant factor explaining apparent extinctions (species not collected by us) is forest loss within the historical range of the focal species, suggesting that deforestation has already caused the extinction, or effective extinction, of a large number of insect species with small geographical ranges, typical for many endemic taxa in Madagascar. Currently, roughly 10% of the original forest cover remains. Species–area considerations suggest that this will allow roughly half of the species to persist. Our results are consistent with this prediction

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

Notes sur les Col\ue9opt\ue8res Scarbaeoidea du Mus\ue9um de Gen\ue8ve III

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Col\ue9opt\ue8res Scarbaeidae Canthoninae d\u27Inde du Sud

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Notes sur les Col\ue9opt\ue8res Scarabaeidae du Mus\ue9um de Gen\ue8ve, II

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Un nouveau Madrasostes des \ueeles Bismark (Coleoptera, Ceratocanthidae)

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Notes sur les Col\ue9opt\ue8res Scarabaeoidea du Mus\ue9um de Gen\ue8ve. V

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Deux nouveaux Ceratocanthidae (Coleoptera) de Sumatra du Mus\ue9um de Gen\ue8ve

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