Avaliação das Mudanças Espaço-Temporais na Composição das Espécies de Anfíbios na Região de Jequitaí-MG

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to assess the spatiotemporal changes in species composition (β-diversity) using amphibian data collected from four distinct cerrado areas in the Jequitaí region/MG during the years 2015, 2018, and 2019. We tested the following hypotheses: (I) The amphibian community is temporally stable, with minimal variation over time due to the compositional heterogeneity of the areas; (II) Amphibian richness and abundance vary between seasons, being higher during the rainy season; (III) Amphibian abundance will vary between years due to anthropogenic activities, while richness will remain constant. Methods: Spatial and temporal β-diversity analyses were performed using the R software with the ‘beta-part’ package. We employed Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) with Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to estimate richness and abundance. Results: Results indicate that there was greater variation in amphibians between sampling areas than across years (P<0.05). Generally, temporal β-diversity is lower than spatial β-diversity (β.SOR 0.638 and β.SOR 0.951, respectively; p<0.05), suggesting greater changes in amphibian composition between locations than between years. Among the years, temporal β-diversity was highest in 2019 (β.SOR 0.851), indicating a significant shift in species composition (p<0.05). Species richness variation was significant only between seasons (dry/rainy) (p=0.014), with no variation between years (p=0.532). Conclusion: This study observed that spatial β-diversity was more influential due to the environmental heterogeneity of the areas studied, with the β-diversity component determining the species turnover between areas.