Such environments with low humidity and experiencing extremes of temperatures can
rapidly desiccate dung piles and dung beetle larvae (Fincher, 1973), thereby altering forest dung beetle species, particularly large beetles (Klein, 1989).
As the Coimbra Forest supports a great number of shade-tolerant tree species across its core, undisturbed areas (Oliveira et al., 2004; Melo et al., 2006), we believe that this characteristic favours a greater variety of environmentally suitable habitats for many animal species, including dung beetles.