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Diversity of arboreal ants in a Brazilian tropical dry forest: effects of seasonality and successional stage.

2010; UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE FEIRA DE SANTANA; Volume: 56; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2447-8067

Frederico S. Neves, Rodrigo Fagundes Braga, Mário M. Espírito‐Santo, Jacques Hubert Charles Delabie, G. Wilson Fernandes, Arturo Sánchez‐Azofeifa,

Animal and Plant Science Education

In tropical systems, habitat heterogeneity and resource availability have been reported as important factors driving ant species richness and composition. For this reason, these variables have been widely used as indicators of forest disturbance. The aim of this study was to compare the composition and richness of arboreal ants between the dry and wet seasons in three successional stages of a tropical dry forest at the Parque Estadual da Mata Seca, northern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Ant sampling was performed in 15 plots in three different forest secondary stages: early, intermediate and late. Ants were sampled during the wet and dry seasons, using five pitfall traps per plot. We collected 43 ant species, distributed in 19 genera. Our results indicated a change on ant species composition along the successional gradient (p 0.05) and was not affected by the variables used here as surrogates to habitat heterogeneity (tree richness) and resource availability (tree density) (p > 0.05). Ant composition did not change significantly between the dry and wet seasons for the early successional stage, but plots from the intermediate and late stages were clearly segregated according to seasons. We suggest that 1 Departamento de Biologia Geral, Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros, Montes Claros-Minas Gerais, Brazil, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, 39401-089, frederico.neves@unimontes.br 2 Ecologia Evolutiva & Biodiversidade/DBG, CP 486, ICB/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 30161 970 Belo Horizonte Minas Gerais, Brazil. rodrigo.fagundes@yahoo.com.br 3 Departamento de Biologia, Setor Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Campus Universitario, CP 3037, 37200-000, Lavras, Minas Gerais, Brazil. 4 Laboratorio de Mirmecologia, Convenio CEPEC/UESC, Centro de Pesquisa do Cacau, CEPLAC, 45.600-000 Itabuna, Bahia, Brazil, jacques.delabie@gmail.com 5 Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E3 1 2 Sociobiology Vol. 56, No. 1, 2010 it is likely that 25 years of forest regeneration are enough to restore most of the arboreal ant communities in tropical dry forests, strengthening the importance of secondary habitats to biodiversity maintenance. Key-words: habitat heterogeneity, resource availability, secondary succession, species richness, species composition.