<i>GlobalAnts</i>: a new database on the geography of ant traits (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Parr, Catherine L.; Dunn, Robert R.; Sanders, Nathan J.; Weiser, Michael D.; Photakis, Manoli; Bishop, Tom R.; Fitzpatrick, Matthew C.; Arnán, Xavier; Baccaro, Fabrício Beggiato; Brandão, Carlos Roberto Ferreira; Chick, Lacy D.; Donoso, David A.; Fayle, Tom M.; Gómez, Crisanto; Grossman, Blair F.; Munyai, Thinandavha C.; Pacheco, Renata; Retana, Javier; Robinson, Andrew; Sagata, Katayo; Silva, Rogério Rosa da; Tista, Melanie; Vasconcelos, Heraldo L.; Yates, Michelle; Gibb, Heloise

doi:10.1111/icad.12211

Cited by 129 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 71 publications

(71 reference statements)

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“…Finally, (c) the finding that herbivorous hemipterans only increased in abundance (and species richness) in the absence of ants in the post‐drought year suggests climatic factors influence trophic relationships in key ways for tropical forest invertebrates. These results contribute to the growing literature highlighting the importance of ants in structuring invertebrate communities and ecosystem function (Griffiths et al, ; Hunt, ; Parr et al, ; Philpott & Armbrecht, ; Poulsen & Sapountzis, ; Rodríguez‐Castañeda, Brehm, Fiedler, & Dyer, ; Russell et al, ). Finally, we show how understanding the important but complex trophic interactions between ants and hemipterans is further complicated by climatic variation (Figure ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Drought and presence of ants can influence hemiptera in tropical leaf litter

et al. 2020

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Climate change is predicted to impact tropical rain forests, with droughts becoming more frequent and more severe in some regions. We currently have a poor understanding of how increased drought will change the functioning of tropical rain forest. In particular, tropical rain forest invertebrates, which are numerous and biologically important, may respond to drought in different ways across trophic levels. Ants are a diverse group that carry out important ecosystem processes, shaping ecosystem structure and function through predation and competition, which can influence multiple trophic levels. Hemiptera are a mega‐diverse order, abundant in tropical rain forests and are ecologically important. To understand the roles of ants in exerting predation and competition pressure on invertebrates in tropical rain forests during drought and a post‐drought period, we established a large‐scale ecosystem manipulation experiment in Maliau Basin Conservation Area in Malaysian Borneo, suppressing the activity of ants on four 0.25 ha plots over a two‐year period. We sampled hemipterans found in the leaf litter during a drought (July 2015) and a post‐drought period (September 2016) period. We found significant shifts in the assemblage of hemipterans sampled from the leaf litter following ant suppression. Specifically, for ant‐suppression plots, the species richness and abundance of herbivorous hemipterans increased only during the post‐drought period. For predatory hemipterans, abundance increased with ant‐suppression regardless of drought conditions, and we found marginal evidence for a species richness increase during the post‐drought period with little or no change in the drought period. These results illustrate how ants in tropical forests structure invertebrate communities and how these effects may vary with climatic variation. Abstract in Malay is available with online material.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Drought and presence of ants can influence hemiptera in tropical leaf litter

et al. 2020

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“…The colour of each ant species was classified categorically by eye using a set pre‐determined colours (see Appendix S2; see Bishop et al, and Parr et al, for method). Colouration of the hairs was ignored, and the assigned colour was focused solely on the cuticle.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Darker ants dominate the canopy: Testing macroecological hypotheses for patterns in colour along a microclimatic gradient

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Eggleton

et al. 2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Gradients in cuticle lightness of ectotherms have been demonstrated across latitudes and elevations. Three key hypotheses have been used to explain these macroecological patterns: the thermal melanism hypothesis (TMH), the melanism‐desiccation hypothesis (MDH) and the photo‐protection hypothesis (PPH). Yet the broad abiotic measures, such as temperature, humidity and UV‐B radiation, typically used to detect these ecogeographical patterns, are a poor indication of the microenvironment experienced by small, cursorial ectotherms like ants. We tested whether these macroecological hypotheses explaining cuticle lightness held at habitat and microclimatic level by using a vertical gradient within a tropical rainforest. We sampled 222 ant species in lowland, tropical rainforest across four vertical strata: subterranean, ground, understory and canopy. We recorded cuticle lightness, abundance and estimated body size for each species and calculated an assemblage‐weighted mean for cuticle lightness and body size for each vertical stratum. Abiotic variables (air temperature, vapour pressure deficit and UV‐B radiation) were recorded for each vertical stratum. We found that cuticle lightness of ant assemblages was vertically stratified: ant assemblages in the canopy and understory were twice as dark as assemblages in ground and subterranean strata. Cuticle lightness was not correlated with body size, and there was no support for the TMH. Rather, we attribute this cline in cuticle lightness to a combination of the MDH and the PPH. Our findings indicate that broad macroecological patterns can be detected at much smaller spatial scales and that microclimatic gradients can shape trait variation, specifically the cuticle lightness of ants. These results suggest that any changes to microclimate that occur due to land‐use change or climate warming could drive selection of ants based on cuticle colour, altering assemblage structure and potentially ecosystem functioning.

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“…, Parr et al. ). The functional relevance of these morphological traits can be tested by examining their relationships to nitrogen isotopes, which get heavier up the trophic chain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arboreal ant abundance tracks primary productivity in an Amazonian whitewater river system

et al. 2019

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Little is known about consumer productivity in the tropics despite the key feedbacks that animals impose on primary productivity. In the Amazon basin, seasonally flooded and unflooded forests exist side by side, and ants (Formicidae) dominate animal biomass. Although flooding has a direct negative effect on soil‐dwelling ants, it is less clear whether flooding has indirect effects on arboreal ants via associated changes in tree communities. To test whether seasonal inundation by whitewater affects arboreal ants, we investigated ant communities in adjacent flooded and unflooded forests along a major whitewater river in central‐western Amazonia. Whitewater‐flooded forest exhibits higher primary productivity than unflooded forest. We thus hypothesized that forest type would affect the productivity and the foraging traits of arboreal ants and that these changes would be mediated by increases in plant‐derived food for ants in flooded forest. We compared ant and plant communities between flooded‐ and unflooded‐forest transects along the Juruá River in Amazonas, Brazil. We collected, identified, and counted terrestrial and arboreal ants, and we measured ant traits with putative relationships to foraging strategy. We also identified plant stems to characterize the abundance of ant food rewards. Flooding negatively affected the diversity and abundance of terrestrial ants but did not change the diversity of arboreal ants. Arboreal ants were more abundant and exhibited higher biomass in flooded forest than in unflooded forest. Arboreal ant traits also suggested that ants may rely more heavily on plant‐derived food in flooded forest than in unflooded forest. These differences were associated with a higher abundance of plant stems predicted to contain ant food rewards in flooded forest than in unflooded forest. Our results indicate that the productivity of arboreal ants is affected by that of the underlying forest. Such effects may be mediated by the predominantly herbivorous foraging strategy of canopy ants, which would link ant populations closely to primary production and stoichiometry. Given ants’ important functional roles, these differences in ant productivity between forest types may have consequences for other arthropods and feedbacks to plants throughout the Amazon basin.

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GlobalAnts: a new database on the geography of ant traits (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Cited by 129 publications

References 71 publications

Drought and presence of ants can influence hemiptera in tropical leaf litter

Drought and presence of ants can influence hemiptera in tropical leaf litter

Darker ants dominate the canopy: Testing macroecological hypotheses for patterns in colour along a microclimatic gradient

Arboreal ant abundance tracks primary productivity in an Amazonian whitewater river system

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