Abstract
A challenge for studies on the organization of ant assemblages in forest ecosystems is to disentangle the causal effects of species occurrences. The structural and functional attributes of trees can act as environmental filters for ground-dwelling ant species influencing resource availability and the microclimate. The biotic interactions, especially competition, can work together with plant characteristics influencing ant species occurrences. To test the importance of tree traits and species interactions on co-occurrence patterns of ants, we collected ground-dwelling ants, with pitfalls and litter sampling, beneath the canopies of four tree species during the rainy and dry seasons in a restored forest. We used five predictors (tree identity, crown size, trunk circumference, litter depth, and leaves density) to model the presence probabilities of ants . Hence, we applied habitat constrained null models in pairwise analyses to disentangle the causal effects of ants co-occurrences. The random pattern predominated in the assemblages, making up 96% of all possible species pairs combinations. Overall, 50% of the species pairs that showed nonrandomness in the ant occurrences were interpreted as resulting from environmental filters, 36% as negative associations and 14% as positive associations. Additionally, we found that the effects of season and the sampling technique on the ant assemblages were also important. We suggest that the ideas of the trees as templates and the paradigm of competition are both useful for understanding pairwise occurrence patterns in ant assemblages, and can be tested using tree traits as predictors in ant species distribution models for running constrained null models.
Highlights
The influence of vegetation characteristics and biotic interactions are usually considered two important factors behind the organization of local ant assemblages
We suggest that the ideas of the trees as templates and the paradigm of competition are both useful for understanding pairwise occurrence patterns in ant assemblages, and can be tested using tree traits as predictors in ant species distribution models for running constrained null models
The ant assemblages we analyzed were composed by species belonging to the genera that are commonly reported for ground samples in neotropical forests (McGlynn and Kirksey, 2000; Ward, 2000; Baccaro et al, 2012)
Summary
The influence of vegetation characteristics and biotic interactions are usually considered two important factors behind the organization of local ant assemblages. The litter is a resource for the ground-dwelling ant species, providing food and shelter (Blüthgen and Feldhaar, 2010), and its composition and quantity can vary depending on the tree species (Ehrenfeld, 2003; Donoso et al, 2010; Mejía-Domínguez et al, 2011; Donoso et al, 2013). Interspecific competition has been considered as the most important biotic interaction structuring ant assemblages (Parr and Gibb, 2010; Cerdá et al, 2013).
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