Ants Indicate Urbanization Pressure in Sacred Groves of Southwest India:A Pilot Study

Rajesh, T.P.; Ballullaya, U. Prashanth; Parvathy, Surendran; Sinu, Palatty Allesh

doi:10.18520/cs/v113/i02/317-322

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Regardless of the locations, the sacred groves contain relics of evergreen forests of the size < 10 ha. While the floristic aspects of the biodiversity of the sacred groves of these States are well-known 36,37 , with our investigations, the faunistic aspects of the biodiversity of the sacred groves are just coming to the light 30,31,34,[38][39][40] . While the sacred groves of Kodagu are located on a land mosaic of human settlements, business districts, homeyards, coffee plantations, and protected forests, the sacred groves of Kasaragod and Trivandrum are located on a land matrix of human settlements, business districts, and Coconut-based orchards or homeyards.…”

Section: Sacred Grovesmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…Invasion of tramp or invasive species results in colonization and spill-over to neighbouring less-disturbed areas, where they might displace or affect the activities of native ants 15,30,32,33 . Our pilot studies showed that the plausible native, but globally notorious invasive ant species, the Yellow-Crazy Ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes), increased several folds in urban sacred groves and spilled over to the rural sacred groves of northern Malabar region over a period of 6 years 30,34 . Conversely, in the southern United States, the invasive fire ant-Solenopsis invicta-translocated the native fire ant-S. geminata-from the natural forests to urban green spaces 33 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

“…and (3) whether the native ant communities of the sacred groves were resilient to the invasion by the Yellow-Crazy Ants? In the entire study, we gave a special status for the Yellow-Crazy Ant because it is one of the 100 globally notorious invasive species 35 and a rapidly range expanding plausible native species of south India 30,31,34 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Urban tropical forest islets as hotspots of ants in general and invasive ants in particular

Rajesh

Manoj

Ballullaya

et al. 2022

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Urbanization is a crucial driver of environmental and biodiversity change. It is suggested that urbanization favours generalist and invasive species and might harm specialists of natural and semi-natural habitats. In this study, we examined how an urbanization gradient and environmental gradients in the habitat area, habitat diversity, elevation, and proportion of built-up area influenced the abundance and richness of ants within tropical forest islet habitat in south India. We used abundance (proportional trap incidence) of overall ants, native ants, invasive ants, and Anoplolepis gracilipes—a globally notorious invasive ant of possible south Asian origin—and rarefied richness as the response variables. We found that native ant abundance was greater and A. gracilipes abundance was lesser in less-urbanized landscape compared to moderately-urbanized and highly-urbanized landscape. The richness of ants and abundance of overall and invasive ants were unaffected by the urbanization. We also found that none of the measured environmental gradients but habitat diversity influenced abundance of overall ants, native ants, overall invasive ants, and richness of ants; however, A. gracilipes abundance was negatively correlated with habitat diversity. Ant species composition of less-urbanized landscape was distinct from that of higher urbanization levels. The richness and abundance of native ants and abundance of non-A. gracilipes invasive ants decreased with the abundance of A. gracilipes. Because the forest islets of all three urbanization levels supported similar richness of native ants, the urbanization seems not to have an adverse effect for the native ants of native forest islets. The increasing population of A. gracilipes in urban green islets, however, is a concern. Future studies might investigate its effect on other invertebrates of epigeal and soil strata.

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