Abstract
Fire has become a common feature in tropical drained peatlands, and it may have detrimental impacts on the overall biodiversity of the forest ecosystem. We investigated the effect of fire on termite and ant assemblages and the importance of remnant forest in restoring species diversity in fire-impacted tropical peat swamp forests. The species loss of both termites and ants was as high as 50% in some fire-impacted peats compared to remnant forests, but in most cases the species richness for termites and ants was statistically equal along the land uses surveyed. However, a pronounced difference in functional group composition of termites was detected. In particular, sites close to remnant forests contained two additional termite feeding groups so that they shared a similar composition structure with remnant forests but were significantly different from sites distant from remnant forests. In general, ants were resilient to fire, and the similarity index showed a high degree of similarity among ant communities in all land uses surveyed. The Shannon diversity index for termites and ants decreased with increasing distance from the remnant forests and level of ecological degradation. Peat vegetation variables and ecological degradation were important in shaping termite and ant communities in the tropical peatlands, but their relative importance was not significant in fire-impacted peats regardless of distance from the remnant forests. This study highlights the importance of remnant forests as a biodiversity repository and natural buffer that can enhance species diversity and recolonization of forest-adapted species.
Highlights
The forest cover of peat swamps in the Indo-Malayan region has decreased by 41% since the early 1990s and contributed only 36% of the total forest area in 2010
The number of termite species in remnant forests was significantly higher than those in fireimpacted peatlands (d.f. = 13, 279; F = 10.435; p < 0.01) in rarefaction curves, but the post-hoc Tukey analyses revealed that the number of species did not differ significantly between sites distant from the forests and sites close to forests (Fig 2A)
The species richness of Group II was equal in remnant forests and sites close to the forests, but Group II was absent from sites distant from the forests (d.f. = 2, 13; F = 5.836; p < 0.05)
Summary
The forest cover of peat swamps in the Indo-Malayan region has decreased by 41% since the early 1990s and contributed only 36% of the total forest area in 2010. The effect of remnant forest on termites and ants. International Research Network and Proposal of its Future’ funded by Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN). K-BN was an international research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and L-JB was a mission researcher of the Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University
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