Diversidade Alfa e Beta no Carste da Serra da Bodoquena: o turismo em cavernas tem influência sobre comunidades de aranhas?

Abstract

The species richness of cave-dwelling spiders is related to the availability of habitat. As a result, diversity is generally low in cave communities. On the other hand, tourism is a factor that modifies the cave environment. Therefore, studies on the diversity of spiders associated with tourism allow us to better understand the distribution of these animals in caves. Therefore, to answer whether tourism influences cave spider communities, spiders were sampled in 30 caves, from which CO2, temperature and relative air humidity were measured, in the epigean and hypogean environments. These spiders were identified at the species level and then alpha diversity was analyzed, quantifying the sample coverage and comparing the diversity between assemblages by evaluating the sample completeness profiles, analysis of rarefaction and extrapolation based on size and the asymptotic diversity profiles, analysis non-asymptotic for q = 1, 2 and 3 and uniformity profile along the diversity orders. In addition to beta diversity, using NMDS and pcnm (Principal Coordinates of Neighborhood Matrix). Analyzes were performed in R. A total of 1107 spiders were sampled, 428 spiders in the epigean environment and 679 spiders in the hypogean environment, in a total of 27 families, 40 genera and 53 species. Our analyzis showed that the diversity of spiders depends on the spatial distribution and the entrance area of the caves, however, this last influence is biased by one cave with a much larger opening than the others. Therefore, I conclude that the spider community is explained by the spatial structuring of the caves, environmental factors, cave opening and tourist activity. Thus, the diversity of cave spiders is influenced by tourist activity.