Dominance in a ground‐dwelling ant community of banana agroecosystem

Abstract

In tropical ecosystems, ants represent a substantial portion of the animal biomass and contribute to various ecosystem services, including pest regulation and pollination. Dominant ant species are known to determine the structure of ant communities by interfering in the foraging of other ant species. Using bait and pitfall trapping experiments, we performed a pattern analysis at a fine spatial scale of an ant community in a very simplified and homogeneous agroecosystem, that is, a single‐crop banana field in Martinique (French West Indies). We found that the community structure was driven by three dominant species (Solenopsis geminata, Nylanderia guatemalensis, and Monomorium ebeninum) and two subdominant species (Pheidole fallax and Brachymyrmex patagonicus). Our results showed that dominant and subdominant species generally maintained numerical dominance at baits across time, although S. geminata, M. ebeninum, and B. patagonicus displayed better abilities to maintain dominance than P. fallax and N. guatemalensis. Almost all interspecific correlations between species abundances, except those between B. patagonicus and N. guatemalensis, were symmetrically negative, suggesting that interference competition prevails in this ground‐dwelling ant community. However, we observed variations in the diurnal and nocturnal foraging activity and in the daily occurrence at baits, which may mitigate the effect of interference competition through the induction of spatial and temporal niche partitioning. This may explain the coexistence of dominant, subdominant, and subordinate species in this very simplified agroecosystem, limited in habitat structure and diversity.

The underdog invader: Breeding system and colony genetic structure of the dark rover ant (Brachymyrmex patagonicus Mayr)

“…Rather, its subordinate behavior may play a major role in its successful invasion of the southeastern US (MacGown et al, 2007). B. patagonicus is described as opportunistic, displaying submissive behavior toward larger and more aggressive ants (Amatta, Calcaterra, & Giannoni, 2018;Carval, Cotte, Resmond, Perrin, & Tixier, 2016;Leal et al, 2017). Both in its native and introduced ranges, this species has been found nesting side-by-side with highly dominant and aggressive ant species, such as the fire ant S. invicta, Dorymyrmex bureni, P. moerens, and P. obscurithorax (Calcaterra et al, 2016;MacGown et al, 2007), sometimes even within the same wooden debris.…”

Ant assemblages (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) associated to environments of a rural property in the extreme western region of the state of Santa Catarina

“…Holdefer et al (2017) attributed to these conventional agricultural practices the 50% decrease in the ant richness, a pattern that agrees with our results. Formicidae is a diverse taxon that may indicate the occurrence of other organisms in the environment (GUÉNARD et al, 2012;BISHOP et al, 2015), and thus the occurrence of ant species in agro ecosystems under conventional management may also indicate the tolerance ability that some ant species show (ILHA et al, 2009;CARVAL et al, 2016).…”

Vegetation structure of plantain-based agrosystems determines numerical dominance in community of ground-dwelling ants

“…Following Baccaro, Ketelhut & De Morais (2010) and similarly to Carval et al (2016) , we combined three numerical and behavioral criteria of dominance to determine dominant, subdominant and subordinate ants. The dominant (respectively subdominant) ants were considered as those that were recorded in >10% of all baits, controlled >25% (respectively >10%) of baits where they occurred, and with a mean abundance score (i.e., the sum of the abundance scores for the species at all baits divided by the number of baits at which the species was present) of >3.5 (respectively >3).…”