Sporormiella, a genus of obligate coprophilous fungi is commonly used to detect large herbivore presence and even estimate their abundance in paleoecological studies. Despite the growing scientific literature regarding the role of Sporormiella in Quaternary sediments, very few studies have been conducted in modern settings outside the USA to assess the reliability of the spores as a proxy for megafauna. The reliability of using the abundance of Sporormiella spores as a proxy for the presence and abundance of large herbivores was tested in southern Brazil. To understand the association between megafaunal abundance and Sporormiella representation in lake sediment archives, we sampled nine lakes with different levels of usage by cattle: i) High cattle use (> 40 per day visiting the lake); ii) Medium cattle use (~10 per day visiting the lake), and iii) Low cattle use (<5 per day visiting the lake). We also examined whether the abundance of Sporormiellawas related to distance from the lake shoreline. Each lake was divided into concentric rings representing intervals of distance from the lake shoreline. The outermost ring provided samples collected within 2.5 m of the shoreline, the second interval was 15 m from the shoreline, then 35 m, and the last one was 50 m from the shore. The number of samples collected within each ring was proportional to the surface area of the ring.
Results/Conclusions
The sampling design allowed an analysis of both the influence of the number of animals using the shoreline and the distance of the sampling site from the nearest shoreline. Sporormiella was found to be a reliable proxy for the presence of large livestock. Our results demonstrated that the concentration and abundance of spores declined from the edge of the lake toward the center, with the strongest response being in sites with high livestock use. Consistent with prior studies in temperate regions, we find that Sporormiella spores are a useful proxy to study the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna or the arrival of European livestock in Neotropical landscapes.