Local and Landscape Drivers of Ant Parasitism in a Coffee Landscape

Abstract

Parasitism of ants that nest in rotting wood by eucharitid wasps was studied in order to examine whether habitat and season influence ant parasitism, vegetation complexity and agrochemical use correlate with ant parasitism, and whether specific local and landscape features of agricultural landscapes correlate with changes in ant parasitism. In a coffee landscape, 30 coffee and 10 forest sites were selected in which local management (e.g., vegetation, agrochemical use) and landscape features (e.g., distance to forest, percent of rustic coffee nearby) were characterized. Rotten logs were sampled and ant cocoons were collected from logs and cocoons were monitored for parasitoid emergence. Sixteen ant morphospecies in three ant subfamilies (Ectatomminae, Ponerinae, and Formicinae) were found. Seven ant species parasitized by two genera of Eucharitidae parasitoids (Kapala and Obeza) were reported and some ant-eucharitid associations were new. According to evaluated metrics, parasitism did not differ with habitat (forest, high-shade coffee, low-shade coffee), but did increase in the dry season for Gnamptogenys ants. Parasitism increased with vegetation complexity for Gnamptogenys and Pachycondyla and was high in sites with both high and low agrochemical use. Two landscape variables and two local factors positively correlated with parasitism for some ant genera and species. Thus, differences in vegetation complexity at the local and landscape scale and agrochemical use in coffee landscapes alter ecological interactions between parasitoids and their ant hosts.

Co-occurrence in ant primary parasitoids: a Camponotus rectangularis colony as host of two eucharitid wasp genera

“…However, hosts have been identified at species level for only four Pseudochalcura species ( Table 2 ) and, at least in the case of P. gibbosa , a close species-specific relationship with the host does not appear to exist. Similarly, all known hosts for the genus Obeza also belong to Camponotus ( Davis Jr & Jouvenaz, 1990 ; Pérez-Lachaud & Lachaud, 2014 ; De la Mora et al., 2015 ), but until now only the host of O. floridana has been identified at the species level ( Table 2 ). According to Quevillon & Hughes (2018) , Camponotus (with 192 records) leads the list of the ten ant genera with the highest number of parasites (including parasitoids), although fewer than 4% of the total estimated ant species (580/16357 valid species and subspecies) have any parasitic associate recorded.…”

Vegetation connectivity increases ant activity and potential for ant‐provided biocontrol services in a tropical agroforest

“…Cards were balanced on coffee branches and were bent slightly to keep the CBB from falling. Restricting movement of sentinel prey, either by gluing them to observation sites or by freezing them, is a common technique for assessing predator behavior (Armbrecht & Perfecto, 2003;De la Mora et al 2015;Jedlicka, Greenberg, & Letourneau, 2011). We used frozen (dead) sentinel prey to increase the availability and similarity of beetles on cards and to reduce the potential for live prey to escape from the arena.…”

New distributional records for ants and the evaluation of ant species richness and endemism patterns in Mexico

“… Camponotus striatus has been found nesting inside logs and twigs in forests and coffee plantations in Chiapas at altitudes ranging from 650-900 m a.s.l. ( De la Mora et al 2015 ).…”