in Sri Lanka - Ministry of Environment

A Provisional Checklist of Dung Beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) in Sri LankaEnoka P. Kudavidanage and Deepchandi LekamgeDepartment of Natural Resources, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, Beihul OyaIntroductionDung beetles are scavengers that feed and breed on dung, carrion, decaying fungi, or litter.The Scarabaeinae subfamily comprises about 4,500 described species known as true dungbeetles exclusively feeding on dung. There are dung-feeding beetles in other families, suchas the Geotrupidae (the earth-boring dung beetles) and Aphodiinae. Aphodiinae beetles arerelatively small and comprise the bulk of dung dwellers. Scarabaeinae are more commonin tropical regions, but in northern latitudes Aphodiinae tend to dominate the dung beetleassemblage. Dung beetles mainly use herbivore and omnivore dung, particularly frommammals, but occasionally from birds and reptiles. They provide several ecological servicessuch as waste removal, secondary seed dispersal and vertebrate parasite suppression. Dungbeetles are characterized by how they process dung. These groups are called guilds or cladesof which there are four rollers (telecoprid nesters), tunnelers (paracoprid nesters), dwellers(endocoprid nesters) and kleptoparasites. Dung beetles have well-understood ecological rolesand species composition is known to changes distinctly across habitat types.TaxonomyScarabaeinae dung beetles of Sri Lanka have been recorded in two classic, regional volumescovering parts of South Asia, Arrow 1931 and Balthasar 1963. These volumes cover thediversity of lamellicorn beetles in a wide geographical region from Sri Lanka, India, ChinaJava and Arabia. The Monograph of the Scarabaeidae and Aphodiidae of the Palaearctic andOriental region Coleoptera: Lamellicornia by Vladimir Balthasar (1963) includes fifty dungbeetle species found in Sri Lanka, whereas the whole volume describes the distribution ofdung beetles in Europe, Central, South and Southeast Asia. Prior to Arrow’s (1931) relativelycomprehensive publication on the Sri Lankan lamellicorn fauna (beetles with lamellate terminalsegments in the antennae; includes the scarabaeids and stag beetles), a single paper brieflydiscussed some of the lamellicorns collected in Sri Lanka by Gille, 1924. It records 47 speciesfrom three subfamilies: Coprinae, Aphodiiane and Troginae. More recent work includes a studyon the diversity of dung beetles in dung of cattle and buffalo conducted in Kandy, Sri Lanka(Nawodinee & Edirisinghe, 2007) and a four year ecological study that assessed the effectsof habitat fragmentation and land use change on dung beetle communities of the lowlandwet zone of Sri Lanka (Kudavidanage, 2012). This was coupled with an island-wide survey todocument the species distributions of dung beetle across the bio-climatic zones of Sri Lanka(Kudavidanage, 2012; Lekamge, in preparation). The geographic distribution of dung beetlessampled was compared with the historical distributions indicated by Arrow (1931) to identifypossible changes in distribution patterns. Specimen collected were identified through theassistance of the National Museum of Sri Lanka, Ashoka Trust of India, the British Museum ofNatural History, the ScarabNet Global Taxon Database Version 1.5 and and primarily, OxfordUniversity Museum of Natural History which supported the taxonomic work. The checklist isyet to be completed in collaboration with the above institutes. The current list consists of allScarabaeinae dung beetles recorded in Sri Lanka including species recorded by Arrow (1931),438