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Abstract
We tested the hypothesis of a negative relationship between vegetation characteristics and ant species richness in a Brazilian open vegetation habitat, called candeial. We set up arboreal pitfalls to sample arboreal ants and measured the following environmental variables, which were used as surrogate of environmental heterogeneity: tree richness, tree density, tree height, circumference at the base of the plants, and canopy cover. Only canopy cover had a negative effect on the arboreal ant species richness. Vegetation characteristics and plant species composition are probably homogeneous in candeial, which explains the lack of relationship between other environmental variables and ant richness. Open vegetation habitats harbor a large number of opportunistic and generalist species, besides specialist ants from habitats with high temperatures. An increase in canopy cover decreases sunlight incidence and may cause local microclimatic differences, which negatively affect the species richness of specialist ants from open areas. Canopy cover regulates the richness of arboreal ants in open areas, since only few ant species are able to colonize sites with dense vegetation; most species are present in sites with high temperature and luminosity. Within open vegetation habitats the relationship between vegetation characteristics and species richness seems to be the opposite from closed vegetation areas, like forests.
Highlights
Several ecological processes act on the determination and regulation of species richness in space and time (Ricklefs and Schluter, 1993)
In ecological studies of ant communities, environmental heterogeneity is frequently estimated by parameters of the local vegetation, such as plant richness and density (Ribas et al, 2003), tree size (Fonseca and Benson, 2003; Campos et al, 2006; Costa et al, 2011), or canopy cover (Kalif et al, 2001; Philpott et al, 2006), which are characteristics related to quality and availability of resources or better microclimatic conditions for ant species
We confirmed our hypothesis that arboreal ant species richness is negatively related to canopy cover, a vegetation variable that we used as surrogate for habitat heterogeneity
Summary
Several ecological processes act on the determination and regulation of species richness in space and time (Ricklefs and Schluter, 1993) Those related to environmental heterogeneity, for example, are usually related to species richness (Tews et al, 2004; Stein et al, 2014). The positive relationship between variables that represent environmental heterogeneity and species richness is more common, because they are associated with mechanisms that promote species coexistence, persistence and diversification This correlation may be a result of the dependence of both taxa on other environmental variables, such as tree richness (Stein et al, 2014). Studies on ant communities in several vegetation types suggest that there may be a positive (Ribas et al, 2003; Ribas and Schoereder, 2007), negative (Lassau and Hochuli, 2004; Schmidt et al, 2013) or neutral relationship (Ribas and Schoereder, 2007; Schmidt et al, 2013) between species richness and habitat heterogeneity (Stein et al, 2014)
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