Effect of dominant parabiotic Ant‐Garden ants on the understory and ground‐dwelling ant assemblage in the Amazon rainforest

Abstract

ABSTRACT Camponotus femoratus (Fabricius, 1804) and Crematogaster levior Longino, 2003 are Amazonian ants that jointly live in a parabiotic association in arboreal nests that are known as Ant‐Gardens (AGs). Both species are locally abundant and aggressive, which forage on the ground and on the vegetation. We evaluated, with extensive sampling, the effect of Ca. femoratus and Cr. levior on the ground and the understory dwelling of ant assemblages in the southern Amazon using pit‐fall traps, beating‐tray sampling, and baiting. We found that Ca. femoratus and Cr. levior caused a decrease in both the abundance and the species richness of the ground ants, changing the assemblage composition, and causing a nestedness pattern. Yet, AG ants seem to not promote significant changes in the assemblage of ants in the understory, with the exception of canopy openness and region, indicating a spatial resource partitioning. Our results showed that the frequency of these parabiotic AG ant pairs can modify the regional assemblage of the ground‐dwelling ants. As ants are ecological engineers and interact with numerous organisms in tropical habitats, the effect of the parabiotic ants can be extended to other organisms that inhabit the gaps along succession.