Associations of ant species to land cover types and human disturbance in south‐west Gabon

Abstract

We recorded ground-foraging ant species in forest and savannah habitats along a 52-km-long road planned for upgrade in the buffer zone of the Moukalaba-Doudou National Park in south-west Gabon. Sixty stations were established with three sampling points on each side of the future road and baited with peanut butter to record the presence of invasive Wasmannia auropunctata (Roger, 1863). We documented 46 ant species including one genus and eight species not previously reported in Gabon, but no evidence of the presence of W. auropunctata. We also found species known to have an opportunistic behaviour such as Cardiocondyla emeryi (Forel, 1881), Tetramorium simillimum (Smith, 1851) and Trichomyrmex destructor (Jerdon, 1851). Species richness in forested stations was significantly higher than in savannah. Among the most common ant species in the area, we identified 13 associated with forests, eight associated with savannahs and one generalist. Four species were highly tolerant to human disturbance. Our study, even if biased towards stress-tolerant species, provides new insights about ant species associations with habitats and contributes to the establishment of a reference system to classify African ant species that could be used to monitor the success of restoration of areas impacted by human activities.

Cambio de uso de suelo, manejo forestal y sus implicaciones en las interacciones bióticas asociadas a Cedrela odorata Linnaeus, Meliaceae

“…En ambientes perturbados, la diversidad de hormigas asociadas a la vegetación puede estar afectada por la disminución de la cobertura vegetal, las prácticas de manejo y el uso de fertilizantes y herbicidas (Roth et al, 1994;Perfecto y Snelling, 1995;Power, 1996;Perfecto et al, 1997). Por otro lado, algunos gremios o especies de hormigas omnívoras oportunistas pueden ser favorecidas por las perturbaciones antrópicas en los hábitats (Schreven, 2013;Queiroz y Ribas, 2016;Vanthomme et al, 2016). En este sentido las hormigas pueden jugar un papel importante como bioindicadores de la perturbación en el ecosistema, debido a su alta diversidad y abundancia, a la variedad de nichos que ocupan y a su rápida respuesta a cambios ambientales (Peck et al, 1998;Cuautle et al, 2016).…”

Effect of road disturbance on ant diversity in the Monte desert of Argentina

“…This functional group tends to predominate in environments experiencing moderate levels of disturbance(Andersen and Major 2004). These species can bene t from changing environments, such as roadsides, so they can use sides of roads as additional habitats and/or dispersal corridors(Vanthomme et al 2017). On the other hand, species with opportunistic behavioral attributes and presumably poor competitive abilities, such as Brachymyrmex patagonicus, belong to the Opportunists group could take advantage of exploiting undisturbed sites, where more dominant species, such as Hot climate species are not so abundant(Andersen 1995).…”