Morphological structure of ant assemblages in tropical and temperate forests

Abstract

Morphological variation in co-occurring species often is used to infer species assembly rules and other processes structuring ecological assemblages. We compared the morphological structure of ant assemblages in two biogeographic regions along two extensive latitudinal gradients to examine common patterns and unique characteristics of trait distribution. We sampled ant assemblages along extensive latitudinal gradients in Tropical Atlantic Forest in eastern Brazil and temperate forests in the eastern United States. We quantified 14 morphological traits related to the ecology and life history of each of 599 ant species and defined the morphological space occupied by different ant assemblages. Null models were used to test whether tropical and temperate ant assemblages differed from random expectation in morphological structure. Correlations between traits and climate were used to infer associations between habitat characteristics and morphological space occupied by ant assemblages. Tropical ant assemblages had higher morphological diversity and variation in the space of occupied morphospace, whereas temperate assemblages had higher variance in size. Keywords

Sampling local ant diversities and the importance of trait analyses

“…According to our results, the leaf litter assemblage was characterized by a species‐packed structure; on average, species showed a more substantial functional overlap when compared to the epigeic fauna collected with pitfalls. Low MTND values (small morphological distances) have also been observed in other studies characterizing ant FD in litter assemblages (Silva et al, 2016; Silva & Brandão, 2010). Although Winklers collected higher TD, this does not translate to a wider morphospace, with most functionally similar species closer than what was observed for the epigeic fauna: lighter colored dots (more frequently collected with Winklers) are more clustered in the morphospace than darker hued dots (more frequently collected with pitfalls) (Figure 3, also see Table S9).…”

Relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes for beta diversity of bird assemblages in Yunnan, China

“…Morphological traits were initially used to illustrate species interactions within natural assemblages and the ecological space the assemblages occupied (Ricklefs and O'Rourke 1975, Travis and Ricklefs 1983, Dehling et al 2014, Silva et al 2016). However, morphological traits are unable to fully capture ecological niches represented by, for example, foraging characteristics in birds (Miles andRicklefs 1984, Pigot et al 2016).…”