Mémoire
| Résumé : | Dung beetles represent a well-defined taxonomical group and are often used as a precise and reliable ecological indicator to assess disturbances levels. This study compared dung beetle diversity indexes on corridors of a distance gradient from the town of Saint Georges de l’Oyapock in French Guiana based on three sampling session during a three year period. As expected higher diversity values were recorded at the farthest location from the town, but the change was not progressive, with no clear impact at low distances from the town. Distance and precipitation factors were responsible for respectively 12.78 and 9.46 percent of the data variation. Dung beetle community variation is hypothesized to be correlated with frugivorous community variation as the first group depend on dung produced by the latter. On the current study, the dung beetle data was showing non-significant similarities with frugivorous vertebrate data variations recorded during the same period in the same distance gradient on a previous study. Acquired dung beetle diversity values were compared with dung beetles diversity values from other sites in French Guiana from another study. This indicated that the Saint Georges de l’Oyapock diversity values were similar to those previously recorded in the Nouragues natural reserve and the Kaw area, considered to have respectively low and moderate values of disturbance. |
