RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Land use intensification may affect diversity, abundance, and functional morphological traits (FMT) related to dispersal, food acquisition, digestion, and nesting in some insects, possibly impacting their ecological role. Most studies of termites on the effects of afforestation focus on diversity and abundance, but changes in FMT have yet to be studied. AIM: To better understand the response mechanisms to land use intensification, we compared the FMT of the worker and soldier caste of Heterotermes tenuis among Pinus caribaea plantations of four different ages and gallery forests of the Colombian Orinoquía. METHODOLOGY: We measured thirty-eight FMTs in the worker and soldier castes of H. tenuis from gallery forests and pine plantations. Then, we used a Community-Weighted Mean (CWM), a PERMANOVA, and a nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) to estimate the possible effect of land use type on the FMT of both castes. We selected the FMTs with the lowest intraspecific coefficient of variation (CV) from each caste to compare their size among the land use types and pine plantation ages. RESULTS: Land use type had a more significant impact on the FMT size of pine plantation workers than the age of the afforestation. FMT of the worker caste tends to be larger in gallery forests than in pine plantations, while the results were inconclusive for soldiers. CONCLUSION: The results suggested a homogenization mainly of the feeding FMT of the worker caste of H. tenuis in pine plantations associated with the increase in the softwood food resource of P. caribaea.
RESUMO
Introducción: Una actividad económica que ha tenido auge en la última década en la altillanura es la forestación de sabanas con alteraciones antrópicas, pero se desconoce su papel en la conservación de las mariposas frugívoras de los bosques de galería dentro de los núcleos forestales. Objetivo: Comparar la diversidad de mariposas frugívoras en plantaciones de eucalipto y bosques de galería, y el papel de las variables ambientales. Métodos: Utilizamos trampas Van Someren-Rydon, dos réplicas de cuatro trampas, en cada uno de los cuatro hábitats muestreados simultáneamente desde diciembre 2020 hasta julio 2021: plantación de eucaliptos de cuatro años; plantación de eucaliptos de seis años; bosque de galería de suelo seco y bosque de galería anegado. También registramos diez variables abióticas, estructurales, alimentarias y de hábitat. Resultados: Recolectamos 227 especímenes de mariposas frugívoras (30 especies, 23 géneros y 5 subfamilias de la familia Nymphalidae). Había más especies en los bosques. Las especies de mariposas variaron más del 50 % entre los hábitats; Satyrinae fue más diversa en las plantaciones. Conclusión: La forestación en esta área proporciona hábitats para algunas especies de mariposas frugívoras de los remanentes de bosques naturales adyacentes. Las forestaciones representan un escenario de alteración intermedia entre las dos unidades de paisaje dominantes en la región.
Introduction: An economic activity that has boomed in the last decade in Colombian highlands is the afforestation of anthropized savannas, but its role in the conservation of fruit-feeding butterflies of gallery forests within forest cores is unknown. Objective: To compare the diversity of fruit-feeding butterflies in eucalyptus plantations and gallery forests, and the role of environmental variables. Methods: We used Van Someren-Rydon traps, two replicates of four traps, on each of four habitats sampled simultaneously from December 2020 to July 2021: four-years-old eucalyptus plantation; six-years-old eucalyptus plantation; dry soil gallery forest and waterlogged gallery forest. We also recorded ten abiotic, structural, food and habitat variables. Results: We collected 227 specimens of fruit-feeding butterflies (30 species, 23 genera, and 5 subfamilies within the family Nymphalidae). There were more species in the forests. The butterfly species varied over 50 % between the habitats; Satyrinae were more diverse in plantations. Conclusion: Afforestation in this area provides habitats for some species of fruit-feeding butterflies from adjacent natural forest remnants. Afforestations represent an intermediate disturbance scenario between the two dominant landscape units in the region.