Suspended leaf litter in an understorey treelet as habitat extension for ground-dwelling ants in the Atlantic Forest, south-eastern Brazil

被引：0

作者：

Macedo-Reis, Luiz Eduardo ^{[1
]}

Leite, Alice Carvalho ^{[1
]}

Guerra, Tadeu Jose ^{[2
]}

Antoniazzi, Reuber ^{[3
]}

Neves, Frederico de Siqueira ^{[1
,4
]}

机构：

[1] Univ Fed Minas Gerais, Dept Genet Ecol & Evolucao, Lab Ecol Insetos, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

[2] Univ Fed Minas Gerais, Dept Bot, Lab Ecol & Evolucao Plantas Tropicais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

[3] Inst Ecol AC, Red Ecoetol, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico

[4] George Washington Univ, Dept Biol Sci, Washington, DC 20052 USA

来源：

JOURNAL OF TROPICAL ECOLOGY | 2019年 / 35卷 / 05期

关键词：

Brachymyrmex heeri; foraging; Formicidae; microhabitat; turnover; vertical strata; Wasmannia auropunctata; WASMANNIA-AUROPUNCTATA; DIVERSITY; HYMENOPTERA; FORMICIDAE; COMPONENTS;

D O I：

10.1017/S0266467419000154

中图分类号：

Q14 [生态学（生物生态学）];

学科分类号：

071012 ; 0713 ;

摘要：

Ground-dwelling ants are active foragers that may extend their foraging area into the vegetation, although the factors affecting their diversity in the suspended litter of understorey plants remain overlooked. To evaluate the influence of the distance between strata, litter biomass and plant size on the ant fauna, the litter ant assemblage of the suspended stratum was compared with the ground immediately below the understorey treelet Erythrochiton brasiliensis (Rutaceae) in an Atlantic Forest, south-eastern Brazil. We collected 1364 ants from 26 ant species. The suspended litter ant assemblage represented a subset of the ground-dwelling ants present in soil litter. The beta diversity results primarily from the high ant species turnover among individual suspended-litter samples, and among ground-litter samples, while species turnover among suspended-ground pairs is lower. Additionally, plant height was not important in determining the species turnover between strata. However, plant height positively correlated with ant species richness, probably because of the increased number of microhabitats. These results suggest that suspended litter in the forest understorey can provide the conditions for ground-dwelling ants to forage and nest, functioning as a vertical extension of resources and microhabitat conditions present in the ground litter.

引用

页码：247 / 250

页数：4