Fernando Zagury Vaz-de-Mello

• Dr
• Professor at Federal University of Mato Grosso

Despite the increasing rate of systematic research on scarabaeine dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), their fossil record has remained largely unrevised. In this paper, we review all 33 named scarabaeine fossils and describe two new species from Dominican amber ( Canthochilum alleni sp.n. , Canthochilum philipsivieorum sp.n. ). W...

Presented is a multilingual (English, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French) key to the 119 currently recognized genera and subgenera of scarabaeine dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) occurring in the New World. Also included are illustrations of representative species of all taxa included in the key as well as supplementary refe...

Type series for 35 type species of Macrodactylini (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) are studied and taxonomic changes are proposed. The following 35 lectotypes are designated: Agaocnemis pruina Moser, 1918; Amphicrania ursina Burmeister, 1855; Anomalochilus singularis Blanchard, 1850; Anomalonyx uruguayensis Moser, 1921; Aulanota sulcipenni...

Abstract – The objective of this work was to elaborate supporting tools for the correct identification of Scarabaeidae, by an identification key of genera, and a commented list of the species present in Brazilian pastures. A data survey was performed on the specimens deposited in the main Brazilian collection and reported on the recent scientific l...

The transformation of tropical forests into human-modified environments, driven by deforestation and agricultural expansion, threatens insect biodiversity. However, the responses of many insect groups facing landscape changes are less clear, particularly Melolonthidae beetles, which play essential roles in ecosystems. This study investigated how la...

Serra do Divisor National Park (SDNP) is a protected area located in the western Brazilian Amazon that is threatened by a pending bill proposing to downgrade its status and to build a road that would effectively slice the park in half. The biodiversity of SDNP is poorly understood and no dung beetle inventories have been conducted within the park t...

Motivation: The accelerated and widespread conversion of once continuous ecosystems into fragmented landscapes has driven ecological research to understand the response of biodiversity to local (fragment size) and landscape (forest cover and fragmentation) changes. This information has important theoretical and applied implications, but is still fa...

Motivation: The accelerated and widespread conversion of once continuous ecosystems into fragmented landscapes has driven ecological research to understand the response of biodiversity to local (fragment size) and landscape (forest cover and fragmentation) changes. This information has important theoretical and applied implications, but is still fa...

Motivation The accelerated and widespread conversion of once continuous ecosystems into fragmented landscapes has driven ecological research to understand the response of biodiversity to local (fragment size) and landscape (forest cover and fragmentation) changes. This information has important theoretical and applied implications, but is still far...

Se presenta una clave taxonómica para la determinación de los géneros y subgéneros de escarabajos coprófagos (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) de Venezuela en español e inglés. La clave incluye 42 géneros y 28 subgéneros para Venezuela, algunos de los cuales presentan distribución geográfica cercana al territorio venezolano y por lo tanto so...

Dichotomius Hope, 1838 is one of the most diverse and abundant genera of dung beetles (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in the New World. It congregates about 200 species distributed from the northeastern United States to central Argentina, and is arranged into four subgenera: Dichotomius s. str., Cephagonus Luederwaldt, 1929, Homocanthonides Luederwald...

Among the five known Trogidae genera, Polynoncus is the only one endemic to South America. Although the systematics within Trogidae is well established, the evolutionary relationships among Polynoncus species remain poorly understood. Here, we conducted a phylogenetic analysis based on maximum parsimony, using the equal and implicit weighting algor...

Campinarana is a fragile white‐sand rainforest ecosystem in Amazonia, where mining activities have been an important driver of landscape transformation, threatening biodiversity. Despite its importance for biodiversity, few studies have investigated insects' response to environmental disturbance in campinaranas . Here, we assess the differences bet...

Venezuela’s diverse land ecosystems are grouped into four major regions (coast-islands, low plains, hills and mountains), ranging from sea level up to 4978 m. The Scarabaeinae (Scarabaeidae, Coleoptera) currently encompass 278 genera and 6837 species worldwide, but are poorly inventoried in Venezuela. We reviewed the literature and the material hou...

In 2000, Cleide Costa published a paper presenting the state of knowledge of the Neotropical Coleopte ra, with a focus on the Brazilian fauna. Twenty-four years later, thanks to the development of the Coleoptera section of the Taxonomic Catalog of the Brazilian Fauna (CTFB - Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil) through the collaboration of 100 c...

Among dung beetles, ‘sit and wait’ comprise a common strategy, in which in-dividuals perch on leaves. The goal of this study was to assess the spatial dy-namics of dung beetle perching in a region of the Amazon. We analysed theintra- and interspecific relationships between individual body size, leaf area, leafshape, and the height at which beetles...

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian mega...

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian mega...

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian mega...

The Brazilian species of Euphoria Burmeister are revised. We describe E. euridesi sp. nov., a new species from the Cerrado biome of Brazil, and redescribe E. lurida (Fabricius 1775). Both species are illustrated and diagnostic characters that distinguish them are presented. A key to the seven South american species of Euphoria and observations on t...

A comprehensive overview of Scarabaeoidea in Brazil is provided based on the Taxonomic Catalogue of the Brazilian Fauna (CTFB). Data in CTFB include 2,532 valid species within 345 genera, belonging to 21 subfamilies and 10 families. Those have been described by 272 authors from 1758 to 2023. Among these authors, Carl Hermann Conrad Burmeister (1807...

Influence of Quaternary climate change on the potencial distribution of Atlantic Forest dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae). The role of Cenozoic paleoclimatic changes in the distribution of dung beetles species from the Atlantic Forest (AF) remains poorly understood. We used ecological niche modeling under different scenarios (pr...

Dichotomius Hope, 1838 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) is a very abundant and diverse genus of dung beetles of the New World ecosystems, with about 190 species, distributed in four subgenera. Luederwaldt (Separata Rev Mus Paul 14: 3–13 1929) proposed the division of subgenera into sections (now species groups) based mainly on characters of...

Homocopris Burmeister, 1846 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) is a small genus of South American dung beetles composed of four species distributed in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Recently, a neotype was designated for Copris torulosus Eschscholtz, 1822 (currently H. torulosus) based on the assumption that the original type series had been lost. However,...

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classification. In this context, the B Brazilian meg...

An illustrated catalogue of South American species of the genus Omorgus Erichson is presented. Based on this study we propose the following taxonomic changes: Omorgus (Omorgus) capillaceus Scholtz, 1990, syn. nov. and Omorgus (O.) lucidus Pittino, 2010, syn. nov. are proposed as junior subjective synonyms of Omorgus (O.) fuliginosus (Robinson, 1941...

Dichotomius es un género de escarabajos coprófagos (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), muy abundante y diverso en ecosistemas Neotropicales, contando con alrededor de 190 especies descritas. En la última década, se ha avanzado en su revisión taxonómica; sin embargo, aún se encuentran algunas inconsistencias en su taxonomía. Basados en la morf...

Megaceropsis Dechambre, 1976 (Coleoptera, Melolonthidae, Dynastinae, Oryctini) is a South American genus with two known species until now: Megaceropsis quadridentata Dechambre, 1976 and Megaceropsis lecourti Dechambre, 1996. We describe a third species herein: Megaceropsis kleytoni sp. nov., from Brazil. Illustrations, a distributional map, and an...

The relationships among the Neotropical Diplotaxini and homology of revised and new taxa are revisited with parsimony analyses based on morphological characters, and probabilistic analyses based on concatenated ITS2 and COI genes. Neotropical Diplotaxini is now composed of five monophyletic genera: Pacuvia, Pachrodema, Homalochilus, Liogenys, and C...

Animal colouration may evolve due to its effects on predator avoidance, reproduction and thermoregulation, and is likely influenced by the organism’s diel activity. The dung beetle species of the Phanaeini tribe (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) show a wide variety of times of activity and pre-copulatory behaviours. Here we tested the effect of time of ac...

Over the past few years, insects have been used as samplers of vertebrate diversity by assessing the ingested‐derived DNA (iDNA), and dung beetles have been shown to be a good mammal sampler given their broad feeding preference, wide distribution and easy sampling. Here, we tested and optimized the use of iDNA from dung beetles to assess the mammal...

Understanding the processes and mechanisms that underlie the spatiotemporal patterns of biodiversity is of paramount relevance, given the ongoing global climate and land cover changes. Here, we investigated the influence of season‐related climatic variables on two dimensions of dung beetle diversity (taxonomic and functional) and at different scale...

In tropical forest ecosystems, pastures are considered a limiting environment for dung beetles, with long-term negative effects on the diversity of this group. To understand how dung beetle diversity changes over time in introduced Brazilian pastures, studies comparing different periods are needed. Here, we conducted a study sampling dung beetles d...

A new brachypterous species of Dichotomius (Selenocopris) Burmeister, 1846 from Bolivia, Dichotomius abayoyensis Amaya, Condori, Copa-Beltrán, Arias-Buriticá, and Vaz-de-Mello, new species is described with diagnosis, photographs, and discussion of its taxonomic position in the genus. This new species is the eleventh known with the brachypterous...

Pasturelands are characterized as grasslands utilized for cattle raising and consist of natural or exotic vegetation, predominantly grasses. In the context of sustainable production, the biodiversity of insects within grazing environments holds significant value. Dung beetles play a crucial role in sustaining pasturelands as the burial of feces by...

The Araguaia Pantanal is characterized by a mosaic of vegetation with high biodiversity. However, our understanding of this biodiversity remains limited and understudied. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the distribution patterns of dung beetles in different vegetation types (Deciduous Forest, Savanna, Riparian Forest, Murundu...

Article recently published in the Journal of Insect Conservation, the result of a partnership between researchers from the State University of Maranhão - UEMA and the Federal University of Mato Grosso - UFMT. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10841-024-00566-3

Although scarabeine beetles have considerable ecological importance in the functioning of tropical ecosystems, and their species diversity varies with changes in land use, this process is poorly understood in the Brazilian Cerrado. We compared the diversity (patterns of species richness, composition, and abundance) of scarabeine beetles among galle...

The South American genus Polynoncus Burmeister encompasses 38 valid species that are considered to be endemic to South America. In this work, we provide a comprehensive revision of this genus. Polynoncus seymourensis (Mutchler, 1925) with only insular occurrence (Galapagos Islands) is now recorded for the continent. We describe Polynoncus pseudogem...

Bird droppings are an unusual food resource for coprophagous insects and used mostly by opportunistic decomposers. Among them, dung beetles feed mainly on dung, although the species differ in their trophic plasticity. Here we report a record of a dung beetle, Canthidium cf. gracilipes, reaching and manipulating the dropping of a passeriform bird, D...

The implementation of exotic pastures is responsible for significant deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The pasturelands in the Amazon are created through both legal and illegal means, and are responsible for major biodiversity loss. In this study, we evaluated the effect of an anthropogenic habitat type (i.e., exotic pasture) on native dung b...

Understanding how selective logging affects biodiversity is crucial to planning cost-effective conservation strategies in tropical forests, yet there is limited understanding of its impacts on fauna functional diversity in the tropical Americas. We assessed how selective logging intensification and time since logging influence multiple metrics of f...

A new species from the southwest Brazilian Amazon, Isocopris rossinii Arias-Buriticá, Bach, and Vaz-de-Mello, new species, is described along with a diagnosis, illustrations, and discussion of its taxonomic position in the genus. This new species is readily distinguished by a deep depression in the frons, a large and trapezoidal ventral clypeal pro...

Coilodes Westwood, 1846 is a Neotropical genus of Hybosorinae. Despite being a morphologically homogeneous genus, it presents a great deal of intraspecific variation, especially with reference to the colour of integuments. This makes identification of species even more difficult, since the majority of original descriptions present the colour as the...

The conversion of native vegetation into agricultural areas is arguably the key driver of biodiversity declines globally. We assessed the responses of dung beetle assemblages (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) to the effects of native vegetation conversion into soybean monoculture in different vegetation domains (Amazonian forest, scrubland s...

Athyreus MacLeay, 1819 is one of the most diverse genera within Athyreini, with 45 species in Central and South America; 24 species are recorded from Brazil. Here, we describe a remarkable multi-horned species, Athyreus joseferreirai sp. nov., from Brazil, with illustrations of the male holotype and female paratype and a map of the type locality. T...

The extinction of megaherbivores (weighing over 1000 kg) at the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary caused drastic changes at multiple trophic levels. However, few examples of Pleistocene insect extinction have been reported in the literature. Here we describe a new extinct dung beetle species, Scybalophagus brellenthinae sp. nov., based on fossil remain...

After almost two decades of stagnation, the taxonomy of the New World Scarabaeinae dung beetles has since 1988 been going through a period of great effervescence. In the last 35 years, 81 complete revisions and 69 supplements have been produced by 86 authors based in 15 countries, addressing the taxonomic status of 950 species. This is what we chri...

Graphical abstract Highlights d Ecological metadata were compiled for 7,694 sites across the Brazilian Amazon d Accessibility and proximity to research facilities influenced research probability d Knowledge gaps are greater in uplands than in wetlands and aquatic habitats d Undersampled areas overlap predicted hotspots of climate change and defores...

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time, and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space. While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environme...

The Pantanal is the largest seasonal freshwater wetland on Earth, characterized by the seasonal flooding and complex mosaic vegetation, which determines its biodiversity. Among this biodiversity, dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) are a group of insects that perform important ecological functions, such as: nutrient cycling, seed...

• As pesquisas ecológicas e a compilação e curadoria de dados científicos são atividades fundamentais para a compreensão das mudanças na biodiversidade da Amazônia; • As pesquisas ecológicas ainda estão concentradas em locais mais acessíveis e próximos às instituições de pesquisa; • A Amazônia é a região do país que menos recebe investimento para p...

Biotic communities in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes can be shaped by both the land use of local patches and the structure of surrounding landscapes. However, studies usually focus on one or the other factor, limiting our ability to propose management guidelines for the conservation of biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes. We used a sit...

Elevational gradients are excellent models to understand species distribution across sites with marked shifts in environmental conditions. In northern South America, tepuis are table-top mountains with elevations above 1000 m and high biodiversity and endemism levels. In this study, we assessed the effect of elevation on dung beetle (Coleoptera: Sc...

Species relative abundance (SRA) is an essential attribute of biotic communities, which can provide an accurate description of community structure. However, the sampling method used may have a direct influence on SRA quantification, since the use of at-tractants (e.g., baits, light, and pheromones) can introduce additional sources of variation in t...

Tropical forest fragmentation is expected to result in the loss of forest-dependent species (‘losers’) and proliferation of disturbance-tolerant species (‘winners’). Here, we use multi-species occupancy modelling to quantify the effects of fragmentation on Amazonian dung beetles at the species and community level. We investigate the relationship be...

The Amazon Forest is one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems and yet its protected areas are understudied concerning insects and other invertebrates. These organisms are essential for tropical forests due to their ecological processes, with some species being very sensitive to habitat disturbances. Dung beetles (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Scar...

A taxonomic revision of the Neotropical genus Cryptogenius is provided. Based on literature data and the examination of 33 specimens, including the name-bearing types of two of the three available species-group names involved, we conclude that Cryptogenius comprises two species: C. miersianus Westwood, 1842, from the Atlantic Forest of Brazil and A...

The taxonomic revision of the Dichotomius reclinatus species group (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae: Dichotomius Hope, 1838) sensu Arias-Buriticá and Vaz-de-Mello (2019) is presented. The group comprises four species previously included in the Dichotomius buqueti species group: Dichotomius horridus (Felsche, 1911) from Brazil, French Guiana,...

Hybosoridae comprise five extant subfamilies (Anaidinae, Ceratocanthinae, Hybosorinae, Liparochrinae and Pachyplectrinae). The phylogenetics of Anaidinae and Ceratocanthinae have been analysed previously. This is the first thorough analysis with greater representation of the entire family, especially regarding Hybosorinae. The present study tested...

Dichotomius ( Selenocopris ) is amongst the most diverse subgenera of Dichotomius Hope, 1838. Due to the scarcity of material and logistical problems experienced by previous authors to access type specimens, the available taxonomic information for the batesi group is mainly the short and superficial original descriptions of its species. In this pap...

The genus Batesiana Chalumeau, 1983 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Aphodiinae: Eupariini) previously contained only the type species, Batesiana tuberculata (Bates, 1887), of which little is known. This paper describes Batesiana chamorroi Skelley and Vaz-de-Mello, new species and presents new natural history and distributional observations on B. tubercu...

The conversion of Brazilian savanna into exotic pastures leads to the loss of dung beetles and a decrease in their contribution to ecological functions. We hypothesized that the dung beetle communities from exotic pastures would show greater significant differences between climatic zones, when contrasted to communities from Brazilian savanna in the...

Scarabeoidea (Insecta: Coleoptera) present more than 2000 species recorded from all over Brazil. They have been scarcely recorded from caves, and truly troglobitic species are yet to be found in the country. In this study, we carried out a review of all existing scarab beetles deposited until 2017 in the Coleção de Invertebrados Subterrâneos de Lav...

The genus Tetraechma Blanchard, 1842 is revised for the first time, and species distribution data updated. Three species previously placed in Canthon are transferred to Tetraechma ; T . balteata (Boheman, 1858), comb.n. , T . chlorophana (Mannerheim, 1829), comb.n. , T . liturata (Germar, 1822), comb.n. . Canthon balteatus lojanus Balthasar, 1939 i...

Among the 26 Hybosorinae genera, seven are present exclusively in the Neotropical region. However, Hybosorinae from the New World have been less studied. One new genus and new species collected in Brazil is herein described to this subfamily. The genus is recognizable by the following combination of characters: labium with semicircular mentum; mand...

The conversion of natural habitats into anthropogenic uses is a key driver of global biodiversity loss, but effects can vary among taxa and diversity metrics. This has important implications for the use of bioindicators in land management. We evaluated the local‐scale responses of multiple faunal taxa to land‐use change in the Brazilian Cerrado mea...

The Riverine Barrier Hypothesis (RBH) predicts that tropical rivers can be effective barriers to species dispersion, affecting different scales of biological organization, from genes to assemblages. We disentangled the latitudinal from the river presence effect to test the hypothesis that the Doce river mouth acted as a geographical, historical bar...

Ever since Schmidt’s (1922) review of Canthon, the authorship of the species-group name Canthon rutilans cyanescens (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) has been almost unanimously attributed to Harold (1868). Here, we argue that this is mistaken. This species-group name first entered the literature as a nomen nudum in Lacordaire’s 1830 memoirs of his South...

Human activities pose a major threat to tropical forest biodiversity and ecosystem services. Although the impacts of deforestation are well studied, multiple land-use and land-cover transitions (LULCTs) occur in tropical landscapes, and we do not know how LULCTs differ in their rates or impacts on key ecosystem components. Here, we quantified the i...

de-Mello (2022): Contributions to the knowledge of the dung beetles (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) of southwestern Brazilian Amazon: list of species and conservation implications, Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment, ABSTRACT Dung beetles perform essential ecological functions (e.g. nutrient cycling, secondary seed dispersal and parasite con...

The indiscriminate use of Ivermectin is becoming a frequent scenario in Brazil, one of the largest beef cattle herds in the world, and the second‐highest commercial production, despite this product having harmful effects on non‐target organisms. Among these organisms, dung beetles are essential for the maintenance of ecosystem functioning in introd...