ATLANTIC ANTS: a data set of ants in Atlantic Forests of South America

Abstract

Ants, an ecologically successful and numerically dominant group of animals, play key ecological roles as soil engineers, predators, nutrient recyclers, and regulators of plant growth and reproduction in most terrestrial ecosystems. Further, ants are widely used as bioindicators of the ecological impact of land use. We gathered information of ant species in the Atlantic Forest of South America. The ATLANTIC ANTS data set, which is part of the ATLANTIC SERIES data papers, is a compilation of ant records from collections (18,713 records), unpublished data (29,651 records), and published sources (106,910 records; 1,059 references), including papers, theses, dissertations, and book chapters published from 1886 to 2020. In total, the data set contains 153,818 ant records from 7,636 study locations in the Atlantic Forest, representing 10 subfamilies, 99 genera, 1,114 ant species identified with updated taxonomic certainty, and 2,235 morphospecies codes. Our data set reflects the heterogeneity in ant records, which include ants sampled at the beginning of the taxonomic history of myrmecology (the 19th and 20th centuries) and more recent ant surveys designed to address specific questions in ecology and biology. The data set can be used by researchers to develop strategies to deal with different macroecological and region‐wide questions, focusing on assemblages, species occurrences, and distribution patterns. Furthermore, the data can be used to assess the consequences of changes in land use in the Atlantic Forest on different ecological processes. No copyright restrictions apply to the use of this data set, but we request that authors cite this data paper when using these data in publications or teaching events.

Occurrence of Pheidole tijucana Borgmeier, 1927 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil

“…One of them is the dense rainforest, which is characterized by very high humidity, high temperatures (average of 25 °C), and high precipitation well distributed throughout the year (0-60 dry days); vegetation is composed of phanerophytes, lianas, and epiphytes (IBGE 2012). This phytophysiognomy presents a wide diversity of ants (Feitosa et al 2021;Silva et al 2022), given that in 1 m 2 of leaf litter it is possible to find up to 35 species (Silva and Brandão 2010).…”

“…Since the description of P. tijucana, many surveys of leaf litter have been carried out in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (i.e., Delabie et al 2007;Pacheco et al 2009;Suguituru et al 2011Suguituru et al , 2013Silva et al 2022), including in wood structures that are colonized by species of Pheidole (Souza et al 2012;Fernandes et al 2019Fernandes et al , 2020. Moreover, several surveys have also been made in urban areas of Brazil (Bueno et al 2017), and P. tijucana has not been recorded in any of them.…”

“…Barroso et al (2020) and Almeida et al (2021) suggested that the occupation of twigs by species of Pheidole could be due to a process of selection. Pheidole tijucana Borgmeier, 1927 belongs to the (Feitosa et al 2021;Silva et al 2022). Given the scarcity of information on P. tijucana, we report the first records of this species from the state of São Paulo.…”

The contribution of the BIOTA/FAPESP Program to the advancement of the knowledge on terrestrial invertebrates

“…Recently, information gathered by some of the projects supported by the BIOTA/FAPESP has been used to compose databases, such as those presented by Shirai et al (2019) for Nymphalidae butterflies, Santos et al (2018) for Atlantic Forest butterflies, and Silva et al (2022) for Atlantic Forest ants, among others under development. These databases represent a great optimization of the efforts made by distinct projects, as they will allow the continuity in the use of generated data.…”

Ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) of APA Pandeiros: A Perspective from a Decade of Research in an Environmental Protection Area in the Cerrado-Caatinga Transition

“…Another 41 genera had species not identified at a specific level. Although Minas Gerais is one of the best-sampled states concerning ants (Schmidt et al, 2022;Silva et al, 2022), further efforts and investments are needed to identify and describe possible new species (Camacho & Vasconcelos, 2015).…”