Climate change strikes again: Hotter, drier El Niño events are stripping biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest.
A new study revealed that intense droughts and wildfires during the last El Niño weather phenomenon—combined with human disturbance—have wiped out more than half of the local dung beetle population.
Effects, according to researchers at Lancaster University in England, are expected to last at least two years.
The warm phase of a regular climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean, El Niño has a global impact on weather patterns.
Five years ago, it delivered a significant drought and, in conjunction with agriculture and deforestation, contributed to what the University called “mega wildfires” that burned more than 3 million hectares of Amazon forests.
The effects of extreme climate on Amazonia’s trees have been studied for decades. But researchers were less clear about the impacts on fauna and their role in ecosystem functioning.
Until now.
Thanks to dung beetles.
An international team of scientists from the UK, Brazil, and New Zealand counted more than 14,000 dung beetles from 98 species across 30 forest plots within the Amazon between 2010 and 2017.
They also had the thrilling job of monitoring how much dung was removed and how many seeds were dispersed by the insects.
At the start of the research, they counted some 8,000 beetles. Six years later, following the El Niño, numbers plummeted to around 3,700. In 2017 they found just 2,600.
“The loss of these hardworking beetles could indicate a wider problem that many mammals living in the forest may have also succumbed to the drought and fires,” lead researcher Filipe França of Lancaster University, said in a statement.
“Dung beetles depend on mammal’s poo for nesting and feeding,” he continued. “Therefore [a decline] in beetles [is] likely associated with the loss of mammals due to that El Niño drought and fires.”
Previous research has shown that mammal presence has a large influence on dung beetles.
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