The environmental transformations constitute the principal cause of changes in biodiversity decrease. This make the comparative studies between natural and altered environments very important. This work compare the fauna of Scarabaeidae at the following areas: isolated forest fragment and pasture at the secondary stage of succession. Scarabs beetles were collected using four pitfall traps baited with cattle meat in each habitat, fortnightly from November 1998 to April 1999. It was collected a total of 3,113 individuals from 32 species in forest and 956 individuals from 27 species in pasture. The Sorensen index was used to calculate similarity, and Shannon index to calculate diversity. The qualitative similarity found was 0.64 and the quantitative similarity was 0.10. A relevant difference was found in the diversity of two localities, the value found in pasture was 1.75 and in forest was 2.44; these values were significantly different by T test (p<0.001). Our results suggest that the changes in forest area for pasture area caused losses concerning biodiversity of Scarabaeidae and the respective functions of these organisms in the ecosystem.
Coleoptera; Scarabaeidae; scavengers; pitfall traps; forest fragment; pasture; decomposition