Canopy Ant Assemblage (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Two Vegetation Formations in the Northern Brazilian Pantanal

Abstract

The landscape of the northern Pantanal region is a mosaic of fields and forests, distributed according to topography and hydrology of this floodplain, resulting in a particular pattern of vegetation distribution. Among the forest formations, mixedspecies and monodominant landscape units can be found which are associated with floodable or non-floodable habitats. Our study tested the hypothesis that forest formations with greater tree richness and which are non-floodable (cordilheiras) maintain distinct richness and composition in canopy ant assemblages in relation to the seasonally floodable monodominant forests (cambarazais). Sampling was performed in 10 sample areas (five cambarazais and five cordilheiras) by means of canopy insecticide fogging during the dry and high water seasons of the Pantanal's hydrological cycle. The canopy ant assemblages revealed 105 species belonging to 30 genera and nine subfamilies. Myrmicinae (41 spp.), Formicinae (20 spp.) and Pseudomyrmecinae (17 spp.) predominated. Our results revealed that the composition of canopy ant assemblages varied between cambarazal and cordilheira forests, as well as between the dry and high water periods. Nevertheless, the richness was homogeneous between these forests and in the dry and high water periods. These results show the specificity of each forest, as well as its structure, in maintaining distinct compositions in ant assemblages in canopies in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso.

Evaluating Efficiency of Different Sampling Methods for Arboreal Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in A West African Forest-Savanna Mosaic

“…The three sampling methods generally yielded similar ant species composition. Although some studies showed that the specific composition of canopy ants varies with habitat heterogeneity (Dambros et al, 2018), here, the similarity of ant species composition observed after comparison of the three different sampling methods may be explained by the similar plant compositions of the two forest formations (Gnaoré et al, 2018). Nevertheless, the funnel trap method caught a greater number of unique species than the other methods.…”

Riparian forest restoration as sources of biodiversity and ecosystem functions in anthropogenic landscapes

“…The richness of soil arthropods was another biodiversity component that was positively related to litter production. Many arthropods that nest in forest soil, such as ants, termites, and coleopterans, use the forest canopy as a substrate for foraging (Souza-Campana et al, 2017; Dambros et al, 2018). A large part of the soil fauna, in our study, was composed of leaf-cutting ants and termites, as is typical in neotropical forests (Fujii et al, 2017), which could be acting to increase the quantity and quality of some organic material in the litter.…”

Seasonality determines bird abundance, richness, and diversity among contrasting forest environments in the Northern Pantanal

“…For example, forests comprise both seasonally flooded, evergreen environments (e.g., Landizal and Cambarazal) and non-flooding, dry, and semideciduous environments, located at higher elevations (e.g., Cordilheiras; Junk and Cunha 2009;da Costa et al 2010). Evergreen and flooding forests are especially relevant for understory birds, as they contain a high food resources availability during both the dry (e.g., a high invertebrate richness and diversity; Taillefer and Wheeler 2017; Dambros et al 2018;Santos-Silva et al 2018) and the wet (i.e., a high fruit abundance; Cunha et al 2015; Ragusa-Netto 2015) seasons. Likewise, the dry season is important for understory birds by supplying a higher availability of habitat and food resources, especially during the onset of rains, which results in the breeding period for most of these species (White 2008;Pinho and Marini 2012;Pinho et al 2017).…”