Abstract
Composed of two main forest formations, Ombrophilous Forest and Seasonal Forest, the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome is constituted currently by a mosaic of forest remnants and secondary vegetation. Representatives of the Ponerinae ant genus Neoponera are observed mainly in both wet and seasonally dry forests. The aim of this study was to approach the diversity of the genus Neoponera in the north of the Atlantic Forest of Brazil (from the extreme north of its distribution to the Doce River hydrographic basin in the south), associating the occurrence of ant species with the types of vegetation. We have compiled occurrence data from the collection of the Myrmecology Laboratory of the Cocoa Research Center, on internet, or available in literature. We found information on 23 species of Neoponera, including a new record for the Atlantic Forest, Neoponera globularia (Mackay & Mackay, 2010), and a new record for Brazil, Neoponera fiebrigi Forel, 1912. The relative composition of the Neoponera assemblages was evaluated according to the types of vegetation. We found that the occurrence of the genus Neoponera is mainly related to the types of vegetation of the focus region, principally dense forests where a higher diversity was observed.
Highlights
The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is considered a global conservation hotspot (Myers, 2000; Mittermeier et al, 2005), as it is one of the richest biomes in biodiversity as well as one of the most threatened on the planet, since only 12.4% of forest remnants remain compared to the original coverage of 1,315,460 km2 in the 16th Century (SOS Mata Atlântica, 2018; INPE, 2018)
In perennial ombrophilous forests, the incidence of sunlight is low at the lower strata and the trees are tall; on the other hand, in semideciduous or deciduous seasonal forests, a considerable part of the foliage is lost during the dry season, which favors the penetration of sunlight until the floor, contributing to the formation of a more open vegetation structure with few epiphytes (Pereira, 2009; Colombo & Joly, 2010)
The Atlantic Forest covers an area of approximately 1,110,182 km2 (IBGE, 2004a), being composed of the two main formations: coastal forest and tropical seasonal forest (Morellato & Haddad, 2000), subdivided is one of the larger Brazilian rivers and its hydrographic basin presents a worrying picture of environmental degradation, since it is within the limits of two global biodiversity hotspots, 98% of its area is in the Atlantic Forest and the remaining 2% in the Cerrado (Mittermeier et al, 2005; Azevedo-Santos et al, 2016; Pires et al, 2017)
Summary
The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is considered a global conservation hotspot (Myers, 2000; Mittermeier et al, 2005), as it is one of the richest biomes in biodiversity as well as one of the most threatened on the planet, since only 12.4% of forest remnants remain compared to the original coverage of 1,315,460 km in the 16th Century (SOS Mata Atlântica, 2018; INPE, 2018). In view of their high diversity and sensitivity to changes in the physical and biological environment, the insects, especially the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), are useful for such studies (Santos et al, 2006; Ribas et al, 2012; Schmidt et al, 2013). Some ants directly or indirectly control the availability of resources, changing the state of biotic or abiotic conditions for other organisms (Jones et al, 1997) Their role as ecosystem engineers, coupled with their abundance in terrestrial ecosystems, reveals the ecological importance of this group (Folgarait, 1998). These ants contribute to structure the environment through soil ventilation and nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, mutualistic associations with plants and animals, on evolutionary as well as ecological scales (Moreau et al, 2006; Klimes et al, 2012; Dejean et al, 2014)
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