Redução experimental de área e seus efeitos em artrópodes de serapilheira e no funcionamento do ecossistema

• Autor(a) principal: Paolucci, Lucas Navarro
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/3944
• topic: Artrópodes; Ecossistema; Biodegradação; Arthropods; Ecosystem; Biodegradation; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA::ECOLOGIA DE ECOSSISTEMAS

Habitat fragmentation is a common process and one of the main threats to worldwide biodiversity, but its effects over ecosystem functioning are still misunderstood. As area loss is one of the main consequences of fragmentation, our aim was to test the assumption that larger areas have greater litter decomposition and nutrient release rates than smaller ones. We further tested the hypotheses that (i) an area increase affects arthropods richness and abundance (accumulated and guilds) positively, and that (ii) greater arthropods richness and abundance (accumulated and guilds) affects decomposition and nutrient release positively. Besides, we tested the hypothesis that at lower levels of arthropod diversity, decreased with a biocide, ecosystem functioning answer is linear. On the other hand, at higher levels of diversity this relationship is steady, due to species functional redundancy. Area did not affected decomposition rate, which was higher at treatment without biocide in comparison to the treatment which we added biocide. Neither area nor biocide affected nutrient release. Area also did not affected arthropods richness and abundance, only biocide presence. We found the same pattern for fungivorous and detritivorous guilds. Litter decomposition was not affected by arthropods richness and abundance, only by biocide presence. The same pattern emerged for the analyzed guilds. We advocate that microbial decomposers and litter quality are the main drivers of litter decomposition and nutrient release, and that arthropods and abiotic conditions play an indirect role on it. For arthropods this might be due to a species functional redundancy.