Sometimes, the fate of lots of small things hinge on the fate of a few very big ones. Take the story of the dung beetles and the elephant.

For a long time, scientists have warned that the loss of certain “keystone” species can cause outsized disruptions in an ecosystem. At the most extreme, it can wipe out still more species, a phenomenon known as “coextinction.”

While this domino effect makes sense in theory, documenting its occurrence in the wild has proven much trickier. Ecosystems are complex and hard to control, defying easy manipulation or observation. But scientists in Kenya appear to have done just that in an ambitious melding of computer modeling, on-the-ground experiments and detailed observations of the landscape.

The upshot: Insect diversity can hinge on the health of a single giant herbivore species. And that in turn can influence everything from nutrient cycling to seed dispersal. It’s a lesson how shifts in diversity can fray whole ecosystems.

“Our findings underscore the value of conserving elephants, not just for their own sake, but also for the biogeochemical integrity of savannas, the prosperity of pastoral and agro-ecosystems, and the cosurvival of charismatic minifauna,” the scientists wrote in a study published today in Science.

At the center of this is the interplay between dung beetles and elephants, or more specifically, elephant poop.

Dung beetles have earned plenty of attention for their appetite for feces, especially the species that roll animal dung into tidy balls and trundle them across the ground. But that’s a trick done only by some of the dozens of beetles that feed themselves and their larvae on other animal’s droppings. There are the “dwellers” that live in the dung, the “tunnelers” that store dung in holes, and then the famous “tumblers.” All told, scientists from U.S., European and African universities identified 176 different species of dung beetles at the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, ranging in size from a grain of wheat to a chicken egg.

Elephants, of course, aren’t the only animals depositing dung piles in this part of Africa. But when these scientists set up a buffet of eight different kinds of local dung, a disproportionate number of the beetles showed a particular fondness for elephant dung. Traps set next to piles of elephant poop captured between 1.5 and 24 times more individual beetles and 2 to 6 times more species than any other kind of feces.

That might have something to do with the sheer volume deposited by a typical elephant. But it also appeared related to the animal’s digestive system. Beetles showed a preference for animals that digest plant fiber in their intestines near the end of the gut (elephants and zebras), rather than ruminants that break down food more completely in a series of stomach chambers. In other words, not all poop is the same according to some of the most discerning dung connoisseurs.

When the scientists plugged the results into a computer model mapping the interactions between all the species, it showed that if elephants were removed from the landscape, it would trigger between 2 and 8 times more extinctions than if any other animal vanished from the area.

But would this digital scenario hold up in the messy real world? To find out, the scientists turned to a series of test plots, each roughly the size of one city block. Some plots were left open to all animals, others were fenced to exclude the very largest animals (i.e. elephants and giraffes), and others were fenced to exclude all herbivores.

When the scientists checked the test sites in 2023, 15 years after their creation, the areas open to elephants were a veritable dung beetle paradise. They had the highest total number of dung beetles, the largest variety of beetle species and the largest total biomass of the beetles. Sites that excluded elephants and giraffes had two-thirds fewer beetles, a 50% drop in beetle biomass and 23% fewer species. The areas without any herbivores had similar losses.

Giraffes were ruled out as a significant factor, because their dung ranked the lowest in popularity in the earlier taste test, where they had a “trifling effect,” the scientists wrote.

The results in the test plots were mirrored when scientists investigated dung beetle populations in nearby ranches where elephants had been displaced by sheep and goats.

Dung beetles’ dependence on elephants likely rippled through the entire ecosystem. Piles of dung placed on the different test plots broke down 35% more slowly in places where elephants were absent. Decomposition is a key activity in an ecosystem, helping to make nutrients available for plants and other organisms. Small fake seeds placed in the dung were also removed at double the rate in plots with elephants compared to those without.

The study not only illustrates the critical role of elephants in an ecosystem, but “also highlights the vulnerability of dung beetles and adds to growing concerns about the decline of insect populations,” Oxford University entomologist Owen Slade and Nanyang Technological University ecologist Eleanor Slade wrote in a commentary published in the same issue of Science.

Indeed, as much as people revere elephants—an feeling probably reinforced by this study – dung beetles are underappreciated ecological heroes. Their work breaking down dung not only helps disperse seeds and spread nutrients, it also reduces parasites and pests and enhances carbon storage. Their presence in the U.K. alone was estimated to have produced some $800 million in benefits to the cattle industry there in today’s dollars.

Talk about spinning feces into gold.

Gijsman, et. al. “Importance of elephants for dung beetle biodiversity and ecosystem functions.” Science. May 28, 2026.

Image: By Bernard Dupont via Flickr