Ants Response to Human-Induced Disturbance in a Rain Tropical Forest

Abstract

A high rate of human-induced disturbance of tropical ecosystems results in enormous loss of biodiversity due to local extinctions. Yet, mechanisms at the population level that lead to the extinction are still poorly understood. Here we tested the hypothesis that human-induced disturbance results in smaller amount of nesting sites for wood-dwelling arthropods that leads to smaller population size and diminished reproduction, and therefore, may promote local extinctions. We completed censuses in less-disturbed and human-disturbed secondary rain forest plots in Puerto Rico. We measured population size and brood production in wood-nesting ants and examined whether these parameters differ between less-disturbed and more-disturbed habitats. In addition, we measured volume of wood parts of all inhabited and potential nesting sites to assess nest site availability. We found that more human-disturbed forests furnish smaller nest sites, resulting in diminished population size and lowered brood production. Our study shows that human-induced disturbance decreases volume of available nesting sites that leads to decreased population size and lowered reproduction. Thus, in addition to the well-documented loss of species richness in human-disturbed tropical habitats, we demonstrated the direct effect of the disturbance that may promote vulnerability of local populations.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13744-018-0624-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Effect of forest disturbance on ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) diversity in a Mexican tropical dry forest canopy

“…In the mature forest, we found more dominant species with arboreal nesting habits, which could be due to the greater variety of microhabitats and resources available in this habitat type (Armbrecht et al ., 2004). Anthropogenic disturbance reduces the number of available nesting sites due to reduced tree size (Walter et al ., 2018). For this reason, a greater presence of dominant ants as a result of the available nesting sites, and those with opportunistic nesting habits, could indicate a reduced availability of resources.…”