Geographical and Seasonal Variation in the Richness of Ant‐Plant Interactions in México¹

Abstract

The richness and seasonal variation of ant‐plant interactions were compared in four habitats in México: lowland tropical dry forest (La Mancha, Veracruz), coastal sand dune matorral (San Benito, Yucatán), semiarid highland vegetation (Zapotitlán, Puebla), and lower montane humid forest (Xalapa, Veracruz). The effects of temperature and precipitation on the seasonal distribution of the number of ant‐plant interactions differed among habitats. The general linear models fitted to the ant‐plant interaction curves explained 78.8 percent of the variation for La Mancha, 80.1 percent for Zapotitlán, 18 percent for San Benito, and 29.5 percent for Xalapa. Even though rainfall is low in Zapotitlán and San Benito, minimum temperature was the most important factor accounting for the seasonal distribution and low number of interactions. At La Mancha, with milder minimum temperatures and higher water availability, temperature alone did not account for the seasonal distribution and number of interactions, whereas the effect of the precipitation × temperature interaction was highly significant. Xalapa exhibits the lowest temperatures and the highest precipitation, but the role of these factors was only marginal. We suggest that the vegetation at Xalapa, a mixture of tropical and temperate floristic elements, constrains ant‐plant interactions due to a limited presence of nectaries. Also, ants are less abundant in cool and relatively aseasonal habitats. The other habitats have tropical floristic elements that are abundant and frequently have nectar‐producing structures. We report considerable variation among habitats in the number and seasonal distribution of ant‐plant interactions, and suggest that it is due to the effect of variation in environmental parameters, the richness of plants with nectaries in the vegetation, and habitat heterogeneity.

Ant community structure and response to disturbances on coastal dunes of Gulf of Mexico

“…Vegetation structure alters food resources, nesting sites, and micro-climate conditions (Boomsma and Devries 1980;Rico-Gray et al 1998;Andersen et al 2006;Hoffmann and James 2011), and further regulates ant diversity, behavior, and interactions among species (Huxley and Cutler 1991; Botes et al 2006;Wilkinson and Feener 2007;Hill et al 2008). The general assumption is that species diversity is positively associated with vegetation complexity (Bonte et al 2002;Tews et al 2004;Sarty et al 2006).…”

Recruitment of predators and parasitoids by herbivore-injured plants

“…Several studies have reported correlations between the abundance of plants with extrafloral nectaries and ant abundance (Pemberton, 1998;Rico-Gray et al, 1998). Bentley (1977) and Rickson (1977) showed that plants may lose extrafloral nectaries in ecosystems void of mutualist ant species.…”

Floristic survey of flowering plants in a tropical coastal ecosystem in Veracruz, Mexico

“…In this area previous studies has been developed only for a few specific plant species, also studies at community level are scarce, and the available studies are centered on reproductive biology (Rico-Gray and Castro, 1996;García-Franco and Rico-Gray, 1997a;1997b;Arceo-Gómez et al, 2012), ant-plant interactions (Rico-Gray et al, 1998;Torres-Hernández -Hernández et al, 2000;Cuautle and Rico-Gray, 2003), diversity of ants by vegetation types (Rojas et al, 2014), floral visitors richness (González-Vanegas, 2011;Rodríguez-Morales et al, 2013), and frugivory by birds (Ortiz-Pulido, 1997). In addition, community-level studies have been developed for extrafloral-nectary bearing plants (Rico-Gray, 1993;Díaz-Castelazo et al, 2004;Rico-Gray et al, 2012), pollination networks (Hernández-Yáñez et al, 2013), and also studies on phenology (Castillo and Carabias, 1982;Mehltreter, 2006).…”