The accurate sampling of communities is vital to any investigation of ecological processes and biodiversity. Dung beetles have emerged as a widely used focal taxon in environmental studies and can be sampled quickly and inexpensively using baited pitfalls. Although there is now a wealth of available data on dung beetle communities from around the world, there is a lack of standardisation betwee...

The diversity, guild structure and succession of dung beetles associated with Indian elephant dung is described in a deciduous forest site in Western Ghats, a hot spot of diversity in India. Dung beetles were collected using baited pitfall traps and from exposed dung pats in the forest at intervals of 1, 3, 5, 7, 15 and 21 days. Twenty-one dung beetle species belonging to the 3 major functional...

An interesting feature of dung beetle behaviour is that once they have formed a piece of dung into a ball, they roll it along a straight path away from the dung pile. This straight-line orientation ensures that the beetles depart along the most direct route, guaranteeing that they will not return to the intense competition (from other beetles) that occurs near the dung pile. Before rolling a ne...

Dung fungi, such as Sordaria fimicola, generally reproduce sexually with ascospores discharged from mammalian dung after passage through herbivores. Their life cycle is thought to be obligate to dung, and thus their ascospores in Quaternary sediments have been interpreted as evidence of past mammalian herbivore activity. Reports of dung fungi as endophytes would seem to challenge the view that ...

Lauková A . : In Vitro Treatment of Different Isolates from Cattle Dung and Pig Slurry by Nisin. Acta Vet. Brno 2000, 69: 147–151. The antimicrobial effect of nisin against selected environmental isolates (from cattle dung and pig slurry) was tested using two methods: well diffusion test and agar spot test. Following isolates were included in the tests: enterococci (33), staphylococci (11), Bac...

The introduction of numerous exotic dung beetles across southern Australia in regions where native are not generally efficient processing livestock has resulted significant reductions the quantity such on soil surface recent years. However, direct impacts ecosystem services pasture quality and nutrient mobility have yet been investigated Riverina region New South Wales (NSW), an area recognised...

Dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) support numerous ecosystem functions in livestock-grazed pastures. Exposure to veterinary anthelmintic residues in livestock dung can have lethal and sublethal effects on dung beetles, and can reduce rates of dung removal, but the immediate and longer-term consequences for other dung beetle mediated functions have rarely been studied. We investigated the...