Amazon Rainforest Ant-Fauna of Parque Estadual do Cristalino: Understory and Ground-Dwelling Ants

Abstract

Ants are ecologically dominant and have been used as valuable bio-indicators of environmental change or disturbance being used in monitoring inventories. However, the majority of inventories have concentrated on ground-dwelling ant fauna disregarding arboreal fauna. This paper aimed to list the ant species collected both on the ground and in the vegetation of the Parque Estadual do Cristalino, an important protected site in the center of the southern Amazon. Moreover, we compared the composition of the ground dwelling and vegetation foraging ants. Two hundred and three (203) species distributed among 23 genera and eight subfamilies were sampled, wherein 34 species had not yet been reported in the literature for Mato Grosso State. As expected, the abundance and richness of ants was higher on the ground than in the understory. Also, the composition of the ant assemblages was different between these habitats (with only 20% occurring in both) indicating that complementary methods which include arboreal and terrestrial ants are indicated for efficient inventory. This study provides an inventory of the arboreal and ground ant fauna contributing to the knowledge and conservation of Amazonian ant fauna.

Defining Habitat Use by the Parabiotic Ants Camponotus femoratus (Fabricius, 1804) and Crematogaster levior Longino, 2003

“…In fact, these ants are widespread and found in the soil and in vegetation in the Amazon (Davidson, 1988;Dejean et al, 2000;Ryder Wilkie et al, 2010;Vicente et al, 2014Vicente et al, , 2016. Nevertheless, canopy openness was a determining factor on the habitat use by C. femoratus and C. levior.…”

“…The increase in the vegetation connectivity can provide a greater diversity of substrates, which may facilitate access to the resource or run away from ant predators and competitors (Clay et al, 2010). This reduction in the need of the ground use minimizes possible confrontations with other ant species, once the ground strata is naturally richer in ant species (Vasconcelos & Vilhena, 2006;Neves et al, 2013;Vicente et al, 2016). Competition between species for C. levior is damaging since it lost its chemical defense, depending on the defensive ability of C. femoratus (Longino, 2003) that show aggressive behavior (Vicente et al, 2014) as well as other species of Neotropical species of Camponotus (Yamamoto & Del-Claro, 2008;Santos & Del-Claro, 2009;Alves-Silva & Del-Claro, 2014;Anjos et al, 2016).…”

“…For sampling arboreal ants was used beating-tray. At four points on the North, South, East and West, 2 meters away from each pitfall all vegetation within 1m² between 1 to 3 meters tall was sampled (more details: Vicente et al, 2016 In these points, measurements of vegetation connectivity and litter height were taken, summed up and made the averages. Connectivity of the vegetation was accessed with a number of touches in the understory of a stem of 2 meters positioned one meter high, perpendicular to the ground.…”

“…In exchange for support and humidity control for the nest and, in some cases, extrafloral nectar (Davidson, 1988;Schmit-Neuerburg & Blüthgen, 2007), the ants offer dispersion and protection to their mutualistic epiphyte (Vantaux et al, 2007;Youngsteadt et al, 2008Youngsteadt et al, , 2009Vicente et al, 2014). Although the complexity of this interaction and these ants occurring throughout the Neotropical region (Souza et al, 2007;Ryder-Wilkie et al, 2010;Emery & Tsutsui, 2013;Vicente et al, 2014Vicente et al, , 2016) the natural history of these species is virtually unknown.…”

Population survey of predatory insects in sugarcane in the municipality of União, Piauí state, Brazil, using light trap

“…These insects have a wide geographical distribution and huge abundance in ecosystems. According to Vicente et al (2015), ants are very abundant eusocial insects, performing various functions in ecosystems, justifying the large number of specimens found in this study. For Bilce et al (2011), ants are the most abundant and the most ecologically sucessful eusocial insects in the tropical region.…”