Abstract

Climate change has become a major concern for scientists and resource managers across the globe. Whilst there is much speculation about the pending magnitude of the changes and their ecological effects, there is an urgent and undeniable need to have sound ecological monitoring programs in place in sensitive areas. Montane meadows in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) are inhabited by short-lived plants and highly mobile animal species that can exhibit quick changes in distribution patterns relative to environmental changes (Debinski et al. 2000, Debinski et al. 2002). Thus, they can provide an early warning system for other ecosystems across the globe. Currently, the extent and range of climatic changes that will occur in montane meadows are unknown.

Highlights

  • There were 25 sites located in the Teton study area (5 of each meadow type except for M4 meadows, which are not found there) including Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) and the adjacent Teton national forest

  • The ant fauna were dominated by Myrmica americanus which were present in every site and Formica individuals (3 spp.) Lasius sp.1 and Tapinoma sessile were moderately common, whilst Camponotus (2 spp.) and Solenopsis were only rarely encountered (Figure 1)

  • Camponotus herculeanus was only collected in 4 sites including two M 1, one M2 and one M3 sites (Figure 4)

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Summary

METHODS

Sites were selected to represent a moisture gradient from hydric to xeric. The methodology of selection of sampling sites is described by Debinski et al (2000). There were 25 sites located in the Teton study area (5 of each meadow type except for M4 meadows, which are not found there) including GTNP and the adjacent Teton national forest These sites were selected to represent low elevation meadows (2000-2500 m), and to avoid introducing another environmental gradient (elevation) into our analysis. Species richness and diversity: Raw counts of ants in pitfall traps can be notoriously skewed because of positioning of the trap near nest entrances For these data we used number of traps per site as a measure ofrelative abundance ofeach taxa at each site. The ANOVA and Student-Newman-Keuls follow up analyses have reduced power because of small and unequal sample sizes so significant effects were investigated visually using error bar charts For these analyses only the second set of pitfall traps were used in the sites whose initial sampled may have been affected by wildlife interference. As the multivariate analyses are exploratory and not statistical we included data from the initial and repeat samples of the two sites whose data may have been corrupted in the initial sampling run

RESULTS
Moisture Category
Group average
SUMMARY
LITERATURE CITED
Findings
Predicting meadow communities and species occurrences in the Greater Yellowstone
Full Text
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