Critical tipping points in dung beetle communities : Implications for conservation in the Atlantic Forest biome

Anunciação, Paula Ribeiro and Tavares, André and Vaz‐de‐Mello, Fernando Z. and Ribeiro, Milton C. and Ernst, Raffael (2026) Critical tipping points in dung beetle communities : Implications for conservation in the Atlantic Forest biome. Insect Conservation and Diversity. ISSN 1752-458X

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Abstract

Anthropogenic land‐use changes represent a significant but poorly understood threat to global biodiversity, particularly among invertebrates. Dung beetles, a diverse and widely distributed group, play key roles in ecosystem functioning and are highly sensitive to environmental changes, making them valuable bioindicators for assessing human impacts. One approach to understanding these impacts involves identifying ecological thresholds, which indicate nonlinear shifts in biodiversity along land‐use and land‐cover gradients. Identifying ecological thresholds offers critical insights into how species and ecosystems respond to human‐induced environmental changes. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot, is well suited for studies exploring ecological thresholds as it faces ongoing ecological transformations driven by deforestation, agricultural expansion and urbanization. In this study, we aimed to (i) identify key environmental drivers of shifts in dung beetle communities, (ii) determine critical thresholds for compositional turnover in these communities and (iii) explore patterns across taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dimensions within this taxon. We found that even minor land‐use changes trigger abrupt biodiversity shifts across all diversity dimensions, consistently benefiting generalist species while excluding sensitive specialists. The observed shifts occurred at lower levels of environmental change rates than previously recognized, with significant changes evident after just 25% of habitat loss. Our results challenge existing conservation thresholds and provide an evidence‐based framework to update environmental laws, guide protected area expansion and direct targeted restoration efforts. We recommend conducting more comprehensive studies to assess ecological thresholds across a broader range of taxa and geographic regions within the Atlantic Forest biome. Advancing conservation strategies with improved threshold knowledge will be critical to maintain the forest's ecological resilience and functional integrity.