Moreover, few studies have demonstrated how Amazonian forest insect populations may change in response to proximity to exotic tree plantations and along continuous (rather than categorical) gradients of environmental changes. However, we still lack an understanding of how far might edge effects of exotic tree plantations spread into the interior of neighbouring tropical forests. Large-scale exotic tree planting programmes are widespread in the tropics and growing in the Brazilian Amazon – initially to meet global timber and cellulose demands and now as a nature-based solution to fight climate change and promote global ecosystem restoration. Assessing the comparability of assemblage samples collected using different baits represents an important step to facilitating large-scale meta-analyses of dung beetle assemblages collected using non-standard methodology. We suggest that a 10:90 human:pig ratio, or similar, is an ideal compromise between sampling efficiency, inter-study comparability and the availability of large quantities of bait for sampling Amazonian dung beetles. The assemblages sampled were remarkably consistent across baits, and ordination analyses showed that the assemblages sampled by mixed dung baits were not significantly different from that captured by pure human dung, with the assemblages sampled by 10% and 90% pig mixes structurally most similar to assemblages sampled by human dung. There were no significant differences between richness and abundance sampled by each bait. Analyses focussed on the comparability of sampling with pig or human-pig dung mixes with studies that have sampled using human dung. We tested the ability of human and pig dung to attract a primary forest dung beetle assemblage, as well as three mixes of the two baits in different proportions. By contrast, pigs may produce up to 20 times the volume. In general, human dung is the preferred choice, however, it is often in short supply, which can severely limit sampling effort. In particular, bait choice is often led by the idiosyncrasies of the researcher, logistic problems and the dung sources available, which leads to difficulties for inter-study comparisons. Although there is now a wealth of available data on dung beetle communities from around the world, there is a lack of standardisation between sampling protocols for accurately sampling dung beetle communities. Dung beetles have emerged as a widely used focal taxon in environmental studies and can be sampled quickly and inexpensively using baited pitfalls.

The accurate sampling of communities is vital to any investigation of ecological processes and biodiversity.

Pitfall trap bait mixture