Effect of dung beetle,Onthophagus lenziiH. on nitrogen transformation in cow dung and dung balls

A significant part of potentially mineralizable organic nitrogen (N) in soil comprises microbial cells (Bonde et al. 1988). Since the major part of organic N in cow dung also consists of microbial biomass N (Marsh and Campling 1970), it may be worth comparing the origin and the successive processes of N mineralisation in cow dung with those in soil. We studied the effect of the dung beetle, Onthophagus lenzii H., on the decomposition of cow dung and found that the dung beetle played a significant role in this process (Yokoyama et al. 1990). We employed, here, the acid hydrolysis method to analyze the effect of the dung beetle on N transformation in dung balls and residual cow dung.