SummaryThe litter ant fauna was sampled by Winkler sacks and pitfall traps along transects running through Atlantic rain forest into an adjacent grassland. Transects ran 65 m into the forest and 45 m into the field. Ninety-seven species of ants were sampled and scored, 85 were found in the forest, 48 were found in the field and 36 were common to both habitats. There was some evidence that species richness was lowest in the field and high at the deepest point within the forest. The composition of the ant community at the different distances into the forest and field was analysed by a number of hierarchical clustering procedures and also by ordinating the data in three-dimensional space. A two-way table of the ant assemblages derived from the clustering procedure versus the groupings of transect distances obtained by the same procedure indicated that certain ant species had preferences for the field or particular distances into the forest. It is concluded that although the ant fauna of Atlantic rain forest is severely affected by clearing, a forest-like ant fauna is able to persist right up to the interior edge of the forest.

Summary Woody debris is an important component of forest ecosystems, but its use in mine site restoration has been limited and it can be slow to build up naturally. A new technique of spreading snipped wood waste onto restored mine pits prior to seeding has been subjected to a preliminary trial at Alcoa's Huntly mine site, in the northern jarrah forest of south‐western Western Australia. We examined whether the application of snipped wood during restoration encourages the return of ground‐ and litter‐dwelling invertebrates without negatively suppressing plant establishment. Invertebrates were sampled across three seasons from experimental plots treated with 0 t/ha (control), 100 t/ha or 300 t/ha snipped wood waste. Invertebrate communities in treatment plots comprised higher numbers and diversity of wood and litter decomposers such as mites, Diplopoda, Dermaptera and Blattodea than control plots. Plant responses were variable, with wood treatment resulting in lower tree and overall plant density but having no effects on plant species richness or plant cover. Wood treatment plots were associated with higher soil nitrogen than controls. We hypothesise that the use of a fine wood treatment at the lowest rate of 100 t/ha (approximately 30% wood cover) is likely to enhance the diversity and abundance of invertebrates in restored areas, with minimal effect on plant establishment. Encouraging a diverse invertebrate fauna to recolonise restoration should help speed up succession and ecosystem functions such as decomposition and nutrient cycling, and more quickly return the land to previous ecosystem values.

Environmental impact studies often involve monitoring and using bioindicators to evaluate the restoration stage of impacted areas. We aimed to assess ant assemblages’ response to the ecological succession of previously disturbed areas in the Brazilian Amazon. We sampled epigeic ant assemblages in five bauxite mining areas, representing different restoration stages, and compared them with two pristine areas. We also compared trends in species richness at the same mine site investigated 14 years earlier. Ten pitfall traps and four Winkler samples of litter were taken along a 100-m transect in each area. We expected that ant species richness would increase with the amelioration in habitat condition (i.e., environmental surrogates of ecological succession, including litter depth, soil penetrability, the circumference of trees, the distance of trees to adjacent trees, and percentage of ground cover). We also compared the efficacy of both sampling methods. Due to more significant sampling effort, pitfall traps captured more ant species than Winkler sacks. However, Winkler samples’ addition allowed the collection of more cryptic species than by pitfall traps alone. We sampled a total of 129 ant species, with increases in ant species richness in more mature rehabilitation. Nevertheless, similarity analysis indicated a significant difference between ant assemblages of rehabilitated areas and pristine ones. Assemblages differed mainly by the presence of specialist and rare species, found only in pristine plots. Rehabilitated areas exhibited a significant increase in tree circumference as they reached more ecologically advanced stages, which contributed to increasing ant species richness. These trends and comparison with the earlier study indicate that although there are favorable increases in ant species richness, in terms of species composition, rehabilitated areas were far from achieving an ant assemblage composition or environmental status that closely resembles pristine areas.