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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2019

Luiz Eduardo Macedo-Reis Open the ORCID record for Luiz Eduardo Macedo-Reis [Opens in a new window] ,
Alice Carvalho Leite ,
Tadeu José Guerra ,
Reuber Antoniazzi  and
Frederico de Siqueira Neves
Luiz Eduardo Macedo-Reis*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Lab. de Ecologia de Insetos – LEI, Departamento de Genética, Ecologia e Evolução, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
Alice Carvalho Leite
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Lab. de Ecologia de Insetos – LEI, Departamento de Genética, Ecologia e Evolução, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
Tadeu José Guerra
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Lab. de Ecologia e Evolução de Plantas Tropicais, Departamento de Botânica, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
Reuber Antoniazzi
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, México
Frederico de Siqueira Neves
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Lab. de Ecologia de Insetos – LEI, Departamento de Genética, Ecologia e Evolução, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil Department of Biological Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
*
*Author for correspondence: Luiz Eduardo Macedo-Reis, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Brachymyrmex heeriforagingFormicidaemicrohabitatturnoververtical strataWasmannia auropunctata
Type
Short Communication
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 35 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 247 - 250
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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