Abstract
AbstractIn Lutzito catchment on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, extraordinarily high suspended‐sediment yields of 1–2 Mg ha−1 year−1 were generated despite the dense forest cover coinciding with erosion‐resistant soils. We hypothesized that ant mounding activity is an important zoogeomorphological mechanism in this area, providing relevant quantities of easily transportable material at the soil surface. To test this hypothesis, all ant mound material was collected collected for dry mass determination from thirty 4 m2 plots installed in the study area every 1–3 days during the 39‐day sampling period. Additionally, three ground‐nesting ant species responsible for mounds in the study area, Ectatomma ruidum, Trachymyrmex cornetzi and Strumigenys marginiventris, were identified. On the basis of the total of 1.38 kg of material collected in the wet season of 2011, the estimate for the whole 8 months wet season amounts to 725 kg ha−1. As this value is in the same order of magnitude as sediment output, it shows that ants may act as important ecosystem engineers and contribute to sediment production here by providing large quantities of fine‐grained, readily erodible material at the soil surface for subsequent transport to the streambed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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