The physical characteristics of habitats shape local community structure; a classic example is the positive relationship between the size of insular habitats and species richness. Despite the high density and proximity of tree crowns in forests, trees are insular habitats for some taxa. Specifically, crown isolation (i.e. crown shyness) prevents the movement of small cursorial animals among trees. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the species richness of ants (Sa) in individual, isolated trees embedded within tropical forest canopies increases with tree size. We predicted that this pattern disappears when trees are connected by lianas (woody vines) or when strong interactions among ant species determine tree occupancy. We surveyed the resident ants of 213 tree crowns in lowland tropical forest of Panama. On average, 9.2 (range = 2–20) ant species occupied a single tree crown. Average (± SE) Sa was ca 25% higher in trees with lianas (10.2 ± 0.26) than trees lacking lianas (8.0 ± 0.51). Sa increased with tree size in liana‐free trees (Sa = 10.99A0.256), but not in trees with lianas. Ant species composition also differed between trees with and without lianas. Specifically, ant species with solitary foragers occurred more frequently in trees with lianas. The mosaic‐like pattern of species co‐occurrence observed in other arboreal ant communities was not found in this forest. Collectively, the results of this study indicate that lianas play an important role in shaping the local community structure of arboreal ants by overcoming the insular nature of tree crowns.

The raft behavior of the invasive red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), has been documented for over a century. However, no rigorous tests have been performed elucidating the structure, limits, and important characteristics of this behavior. Rafting makes S. invicta competitive in both native and foreign environments. Further understanding of this behavior will provide critical advancement to the comprehension of this ant's global invasion ecology.Though speculations exist, no one has looked at the movements of individuals within the raft formation, the longevity of rafts, raft success rate, or the importance of different life stages and varying types of adults to raft formation. Furthermore, bubble use has been extensively studied in arthropods, but it has never been documented in social insects. The use of bubbles as a means of floatation has never before been noted in raft formation.This study shows that ants trapped under water escape by lifting themselves to the air-water interface through the use of bubbles collected from submerged substrate. The presence of larvae was noted to increase colony survival and maximize raft longevity due in part their ability to hold bubbles under hydrophobic setae.

Understanding how habitat structure and resource availability affect local species distributions is a key goal of community ecology. Where habitats occur as a mosaic, variation in connectivity among patches influences both local species richness and composition, and connectivity is a key conservation concern in fragmented landscapes. Similarly, availability of limiting resources frequently determines species coexistence or exclusion. For primarily cursorial arthropods like ants, gaps between neighboring trees are a significant barrier to movement through the forest canopy. Competition for limited resources such as nest sites also promotes antagonistic interactions. Lianas (woody vines) connect normally isolated neighboring tree crowns and often have hollow stems inhabited by ants. We used two large‐scale liana‐removal experiments to determine how connectivity and nest site availability provided by lianas affect arboreal ant species richness, species composition, and β‐diversity in a lowland tropical forest in Panama. Removing lianas from a tree crown reduced ant species richness up to 35%, and disproportionately affected species that require large foraging areas. Adding artificial connectivity to trees mitigated the effects of liana removal. Ant colonization of artificial nests was higher (73% occupied) in trees without lianas vs. trees with lianas (28% occupied). However, artificial nests typically were colonized by existing polydomous, resident ant species. As a result, nest addition did not affect ant community structure. Collectively, these results indicate that lianas are important to the maintenance of arboreal ant diversity specifically by providing connectivity among neighboring tree crowns. Anticipated increases in liana abundance in this forest could increase the local (tree‐level) species richness of arboreal ants, with a compositional bias toward elevating the density of broad‐ranging specialist predators.

Small cursorial ectotherms risk overheating when foraging in the tropical forest canopy, where the surfaces of unshaded tree branches commonly exceed 50 °C. We quantified the heating and subsequent cooling rates of 11 common canopy ant species from Panama and tested the hypothesis that ant workers stop foraging at temperatures consistent with the prevention of overheating. We created hot experimental "sunflecks" on existing foraging trails of four ant species from different clades and spanning a broad range of body size, heating rate, and critical thermal maxima (CT). Different ant species exhibited very different heating rates in the lab, and these differences did not follow trends predicted by body size alone. Experiments with ant models showed that heating rates are strongly affected by color in addition to body size. Foraging workers of all species showed strong responses to heating and consistently abandoned focal sites between 36 and 44 °C. Atta colombica and Azteca trigona workers resumed foraging shortly after heat was removed, but Cephalotes atratus and Dolichoderus bispinosus workers continued to avoid the heated patch even after >5 min of cooling. Large foraging ants (C. atratus) responded slowly to developing thermal extremes, whereas small ants (A. trigona) evacuated sunflecks relatively quickly, and at lower estimated body temperatures than when revisiting previously heated patches. The results of this study provide the first field-based insight into how foraging ants respond behaviorally to the heterogeneous thermal landscape of the tropical forest canopy.