A global database of ant species abundances

Gibb, Heloise; Dunn, Robert R.; Sanders, Nathan J.; Grossman, Blair F.; Photakis, Manoli; Abril, Sílvia; Agosti, Donat; Andersen, Alan N.; Angulo, Elena; Armbrecht, Inge; Arnán, Xavier; Baccaro, Fabrício Beggiato; Bishop, Tom R.; Boulay, Raphaël; Brühl, Carsten A.; Castracani, Cristina; Cerdá, Xím; Toro, Israel Del; Delsinne, Thibaut; Diaz, Mireia; Ellison, Aaron M.; Enríquez, Martha L.; Fayle, Tom M.; Feener, Donald H.; Fisher, Brian L.; Fisher, Robert N.; Fitzpatrick, Matthew C.; Gómez, Crisanto; Gotelli, Nicholas J.; Gove, Aaron D.; Grasso, Donató A.; Groc, Sarah; Guénard, Benoit; Gunawardene, Nihara; Heterick, Brian E.; Hoffmann, Benjamin D.; Janda, Milan; Jenkins, Clinton N.; Kaspari, Michael; Klimeš, Petr; Lach, Lori; Laeger, Thomas; Lattke, John E.; Leponce, Maurice; Lessard, Jean; Longino, John T.; Lucky, Andrea; Luke, Sarah H.; Majer, Jonathan; McGlynn, Terrence P.; Menke, Sean B.; Mezger, Dirk; Mori, Alessandra; Moses, Jimmy; Munyai, Thinandavha C.; Pacheco, Renata; Paknia, Omid; Pearce-Duvet, Jessica; Pfeiffer, Martin; Philpott, Stacy M.; Resasco, Julian; Retana, Javier; Silva, Rogério Rosa da; Sorger, Magdalena D.; Souza, Jorge Luiz Pereira; Suarez, Andrew V.; Tista, Melanie; Vasconcelos, Heraldo L.; Vonshak, Merav; Weiser, Michael D.; Yates, Michelle; Parr, Catherine L.

doi:10.1002/ecy.1682

Cited by 41 publications

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“…Second, we assembled the community data from our own sources, data papers (e.g. Gibb et al ) and Ecological Archives . [Correction added on 24 November 2017, after first online publication: The data source “Gibbs et al ”, was previously omitted and has been added to the earlier sentence and reference list.]…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A meta‐analysis of nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity across organisms and ecosystems

Soininen

Heino

Wang

2017

Global Ecol Biogeogr

383

301

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Aim: The number of studies investigating the nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity has increased substantially, but our general understanding of the drivers of turnover and nestedness remains elusive. Here, we examined the effects of species traits, spatial extent, latitude and ecosystem type on the nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity. Location: Global.Time period: 1968-2017.Major taxa studied: From bacteria to mammals. Methods:From the 99 studies that partition total beta diversity into its turnover and nestedness components, we assembled 269 and 259 data points for the pairwise and multiple site betadiversity metrics, respectively. Our data covered a broad variation in species dispersal type, body size and trophic position. The data were from freshwater, marine and terrestrial realms, and encompassed geographical areas from the tropics to near polar regions. We used linear modelling as a meta-regression tool to analyse the data.Results: Pairwise turnover, multiple site turnover and total beta diversity all decreased significantly with latitude. In contrast, multiple site nestedness showed a positive relationship with latitude. Beta-diversity components did not generally differ among the realms. The turnover component and total beta diversity increased with spatial extent, whereas nestedness was scale invariant for pairwise metrics. Multiple site beta-diversity components did not vary with spatial extent. Surprisingly, passively dispersed organisms had lower turnover and total beta diversity than flying organisms. Body size showed a relatively weak relationship with beta diversity but had important interactions with trophic position, thus also affecting beta diversity via interactive effects. Producers had significantly higher average pairwise turnover and total beta diversity than carnivores. Main conclusions:The present results provide evidence that species turnover, being consistently the larger component of total beta diversity, and nestedness are related to the latitude of the study area and intrinsic organismal features. We showed that two beta-diversity components had generally opposing patterns with regard to latitude. We highlight that beta-diversity partition may give additional insights into the underlying causes of spatial variability in biotic communities compared with total beta diversity alone. K E Y W O R D Sbiodiversity, body size, dispersal, global, macroecology, meta-analysis, nestedness, turnover 96 |

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gibb et al ) and Ecological Archives . [Correction added on 24 November 2017, after first online publication: The data source “Gibbs et al ”, was previously omitted and has been added to the earlier sentence and reference list.] We also searched for the raw data sets in the Dryad digital repository (http://datadryad.org/).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A meta‐analysis of nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity across organisms and ecosystems

Soininen

Heino

Wang

2017

Global Ecol Biogeogr

383

301

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…We used two measures of the abundance of morphospecies: “Occurrence” was quantified as the presence/absence of each morphospecies per trap, and “abundance” was quantified by counting all individuals of each morphospecies per trap (Gibb et al. ). Because ants are social insects, occurrence data approximate the number of ant colonies per locality and were used to assess diversity, whereas abundance data were used to assess colony productivity (Gotelli et al.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arboreal ant abundance tracks primary productivity in an Amazonian whitewater river system

et al. 2019

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Little is known about consumer productivity in the tropics despite the key feedbacks that animals impose on primary productivity. In the Amazon basin, seasonally flooded and unflooded forests exist side by side, and ants (Formicidae) dominate animal biomass. Although flooding has a direct negative effect on soil‐dwelling ants, it is less clear whether flooding has indirect effects on arboreal ants via associated changes in tree communities. To test whether seasonal inundation by whitewater affects arboreal ants, we investigated ant communities in adjacent flooded and unflooded forests along a major whitewater river in central‐western Amazonia. Whitewater‐flooded forest exhibits higher primary productivity than unflooded forest. We thus hypothesized that forest type would affect the productivity and the foraging traits of arboreal ants and that these changes would be mediated by increases in plant‐derived food for ants in flooded forest. We compared ant and plant communities between flooded‐ and unflooded‐forest transects along the Juruá River in Amazonas, Brazil. We collected, identified, and counted terrestrial and arboreal ants, and we measured ant traits with putative relationships to foraging strategy. We also identified plant stems to characterize the abundance of ant food rewards. Flooding negatively affected the diversity and abundance of terrestrial ants but did not change the diversity of arboreal ants. Arboreal ants were more abundant and exhibited higher biomass in flooded forest than in unflooded forest. Arboreal ant traits also suggested that ants may rely more heavily on plant‐derived food in flooded forest than in unflooded forest. These differences were associated with a higher abundance of plant stems predicted to contain ant food rewards in flooded forest than in unflooded forest. Our results indicate that the productivity of arboreal ants is affected by that of the underlying forest. Such effects may be mediated by the predominantly herbivorous foraging strategy of canopy ants, which would link ant populations closely to primary production and stoichiometry. Given ants’ important functional roles, these differences in ant productivity between forest types may have consequences for other arthropods and feedbacks to plants throughout the Amazon basin.

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“…The database includes primary data collected during the authors’ own field work and data derived from an exhaustive search of the scientific literature. The data are compiled in the Global Ants Database (GLAD, http://globalants.org/), a collaboration among ant ecologists worldwide bringing together data on the abundance and traits of ants in local assemblages worldwide (Dunn et al., ; Gibb et al., ; Parr et al., ). Ant assemblages included in this study met the following criteria: (a) the ground‐foraging ant assemblage was sampled using pitfall trapping.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dominance–diversity relationships in ant communities differ with invasion

Arnán

Andersen

Gibb

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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The relationship between levels of dominance and species richness is highly contentious, especially in ant communities. The dominance-impoverishment rule states that high levels of dominance only occur in species-poor communities, but there appear to be many cases of high levels of dominance in highly diverse communities. The extent to which dominant species limit local richness through competitive exclusion remains unclear, but such exclusion appears more apparent for non-native rather than native dominant species. Here we perform the first global analysis of the relationship between behavioral dominance and species richness. We used data from 1,293 local assemblages of ground-dwelling ants distributed across five continents to document the generality of the dominance-impoverishment rule, and to identify the biotic and abiotic conditions under which it does and does not apply. We found that the behavioral dominance-diversity relationship varies greatly, and depends on whether dominant species are native or non-native, whether dominance is considered as occurrence or relative abundance, and on variation in mean annual temperature. There were declines in diversity with increasing dominance in invaded communities, but diversity increased with increasing dominance in native communities. These patterns occur along the global temperature gradient. However, positive and negative relationships are strongest in the hottest sites. We also found that climate regulates the degree of behavioral dominance, but differently from how it shapes species richness. Our findings imply that, despite strong competitive interactions among ants, competitive exclusion is not a major driver of local richness in native ant communities. Although the dominance-impoverishment rule applies to invaded communities, we propose an alternative dominance-diversification rule for native communities.

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A global database of ant species abundances

Cited by 41 publications

References 0 publications

A meta‐analysis of nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity across organisms and ecosystems

A meta‐analysis of nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity across organisms and ecosystems

Arboreal ant abundance tracks primary productivity in an Amazonian whitewater river system

Dominance–diversity relationships in ant communities differ with invasion

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