Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Edge Effects And Diversity Of Understory And Canopy Cloud Forest Beetles, Mallory Barbier

Honors Theses

Habitat fragmentation results in edge effects— changes in diversity and community composition along high-contrast forest edges. To date, a study of edge effects on beetle diversity has not been performed in tropical cloud forests, and few studies compare communities at both understory and canopy levels. Using bottle traps, I sampled canopy and understory beetle communities in a tropical lower montane cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica across three distances (edge- 15 m, middle- 100 m, far- 205 m) along an edge-to-interior transect into the forest. According to the Shannon-Weiner diversity index, the site with the most diversity was the middle …