Abstract
AbstractThe conversion of natural ecosystems to agricultural land is one of the most important drivers of biodiversity decline worldwide, particularly in the tropics. Species loss is typically trait‐associated, leading to filtering of disturbance‐resistant species during community assembly, which affects ecosystem functioning and evolutionary potential of communities. To understand the ecological and phylogenetic impact of rainforest conversion to agricultural systems, we combine analysis of nesting habit, feeding habit, colony size, and body size of canopy ants (Formicidae) with a phylogenetic analysis of species collected in four land‐use systems in Sumatra, Indonesia: (1) lowland tropical rainforest, (2) jungle rubber (extensive rubber agroforest), and smallholder plantations of (3) rubber and (4) oil palm. Canopy ant communities in these land‐use systems differed in trait composition, with a larger proportion of generalist nesting and generalist‐omnivore feeding species in oil palm compared to rainforest and a larger proportion of generalist nesters and species with large colonies (>1000 individuals) in rubber than in rainforest. Traits of canopy ant communities in jungle rubber were more similar to those in rainforest than to those in rubber and oil palm plantations. In rainforest, mean pairwise phylogenetic distance was lower than expected for random community assembly, but did not differ from random in the other land‐use systems. Of the traits nesting habit, feeding habit, and colony size, only feeding habit exhibited phylogenetic signal. Our results show that rainforest conversion to agricultural systems is accompanied by shifts in trait composition of canopy ant communities. Further, our results argue against environmental filtering of closely related canopy ant species as the major community assembly mechanism in plantation systems, but suggest that the Sumatran lowland rainforests harbor recently diverged endemic ant species that are particularly vulnerable to rainforest conversion to agricultural systems. Given the importance of ants for tropical ecosystems, the ecological differences among ant communities along the land‐use gradient might have important consequences for ecosystem functioning and services in plantation systems.
Highlights
Land-use change threatens natural ecosystems worldwide (Gibbs et al 2010, Gibson et al 2011, Newbold et al 2015)
The proportion of species nesting in rotten wood was a factor of 0.5 lower in oil palm than in rainforest and rubber (ANOVA: F3,28 = 5.06, P = 0.006; Fig. 2d), but oil palm had a larger proportion of ant species nesting in leaf litter than did rubber (ANOVA: F3,28 = 3.48, P = 0.029; Fig. 2e)
Myrmecophyteassociated ants made up a greater proportion of the community in rubber and a lower proportion in oil palm compared to rainforest and jungle rubber; compared to rainforest, proportions differed by a factor of 2.7 in rubber and 0.17 in oil palm (F3,28 = 43.87, P < 0.001; Fig. 2g)
Summary
Land-use change threatens natural ecosystems worldwide (Gibbs et al 2010, Gibson et al 2011, Newbold et al 2015). Agricultural intensification in South America and Southeast Asia has come at the expense of the highly diverse rainforests in Amazonia and Sundaland (Hansen et al 2009, Hansen 2013, Turubanova et al 2018). Large areas of those rainforests are within the boundaries of Brazil and Indonesia, recently experiencing exceptionally high rates of deforestation (Hansen et al 2009, Margono et al 2012, 2014). Rainforest conversion to agricultural land heavily affects ecosystem services (Foley 2005, Cardinale et al 2012, Barnes et al 2014, Dislich et al 2017), such as decomposition (Krashevska et al 2018), soil nutrient cycling (Kurniawan et al 2018), and carbon storage (Guillaume et al 2015, 2018)
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