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27 April 2023 A comparison of ecomorphology between introduced and native Australian dung beetles
Alexander Harvey, Emma Sherratt
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Among the many catastrophic introductions of exotic species to Australia, the Australian Dung Beetle Project stands apart as a success story. From 1965 dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) were introduced for biological control purposes, and 23 species survived to become integrated into the environment with apparently little-to-no competition with native species. To understand this, we investigated ecomorphological diversity in the Australian dung beetle fauna, examining variation in functional traits among rolling and tunnelling species that are native to Australia and introduced. We found that introduced species are, on average, larger than native species of the same nidification strategy, but the size ranges overlap. Native and introduced tunnellers are convergent in body shape, whereas introduced rollers have distinct body shape compared with native species. Rollers and tunnellers also have distinct allometric patterns, where shape variation predicted by size aligns along two diverging allometric trajectories between nidification strategies. Our results suggest that ecomorphological differences do not explain the apparent lack of competition between tunnellers, but this may be the factor for rollers. Also, these results indicate that body size and associated allometric scaling is an important aspect of the ecomorphology of dung beetles that should be considered in future studies.

Alexander Harvey and Emma Sherratt "A comparison of ecomorphology between introduced and native Australian dung beetles," Australian Journal of Zoology 70(4), 115-125, (27 April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1071/ZO22044
Received: 29 November 2022; Accepted: 23 February 2023; Published: 27 April 2023
KEYWORDS
convergence
diversity
dung beetles
ecomorphology
functional morphology
Morphometrics
niche partitioning
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