Secretory activity of extrafloral nectaries shaping multitrophic ant-plant-herbivore interactions in an arid environment

Dáttilo, Wesley; Aguirre, Armando; Flores-Flores, Rocío Vianey; Fagundes, Roberth; Lange, Denise; García‐Chávez, Juan H.; Del‐Claro, Kleber; Rico-Gray, Víctor

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2014.12.001

Cited by 57 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…by seed production, as most annual plants have gone to seed by June (Gordon, Holmes, & Nacu, 2008). The peaks in ant species richness and Shannon's diversity in May and June in unburned plots in the Great Basin ( Figure 1) may be related to flowering events, seed production (Pol, Casenave, & Pirk, 2011), nectar production (Dáttilo et al, 2015), and increasing summer temperatures (Crist & MacMahon, 1991). The…”

Section: Invertebrate Responses Over Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Invertebrate community response to fire and rodent activity in the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts

Day

Birrell

Terry

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Recent increases in the frequency and size of desert wildfires bring into question the impacts of fire on desert invertebrate communities. Furthermore, consumer communities can strongly impact invertebrates through predation and top‐down effects on plant community assembly. We experimentally applied burn and rodent exclusion treatments in a full factorial design at sites in both the Mojave and Great Basin deserts to examine the impact that fire and rodent consumers have on invertebrate communities. Pitfall traps were used to survey invertebrates from April through September 2016 to determine changes in abundance, richness, and diversity of invertebrate communities in response to fire and rodent treatments. Generally speaking, rodent exclusion had very little effect on invertebrate abundance or ant abundance, richness or diversity. The one exception was ant abundance, which was higher in rodent access plots than in rodent exclusion plots in June 2016, but only at the Great Basin site. Fire had little effect on the abundances of invertebrate groups at either desert site, with the exception of a negative effect on flying‐forager abundance at our Great Basin site. However, fire reduced ant species richness and Shannon's diversity at both desert sites. Fire did appear to indirectly affect ant community composition by altering plant community composition. Structural equation models suggest that fire increased invasive plant cover, which negatively impacted ant species richness and Shannon's diversity, a pattern that was consistent at both desert sites. These results suggest that invertebrate communities demonstrate some resilience to fire and invasions but increasing fire and spread of invasive due to invasive grass fire cycles may put increasing pressure on the stability of invertebrate communities.

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Section: Invertebrate Responses Over Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Invertebrate community response to fire and rodent activity in the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts

Day

Birrell

Terry

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Hawkins (Fabaceae) and Vachellia constricta (Benth.) Seigler and Ebinger (Fabaceae) (ZavalaHurtado, 1982, Pavón et al, 2000, Dáttilo et al, 2015. The study area exhibits strong seasonality, with a long dry season from October to May and a short rainy season from June to September.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Protocol Using Artificial Seeds to Evaluate Dietary Preferences of Harvester Ants in Semi-arid Environments

Luna¹,

Dáttilo²

2018

Sociobiology

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The preferences of seed intake by harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.) have been debated for a long time, mainly due the lack of repeatable methods to draw clear conclusions. However, several characteristics of the food resource are well recognized as the drivers of such selective predation. For instance, resource quality (i.e., availability of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins) is one factor that could explain the observed foraging patterns of Pogonomyrmex species. In this sense, experimental approaches using artificial resources (e.g., synthetic seeds/diaspores) have provided an useful and alternative tool to study ant’s food foraging behavior. Therefore, it is expected that the use of artificial seeds also could offer a versatile way to assess the influence of resource quality exert on the resource selection by harvester ants. On the other hand, empirical experiments involving harvester ants and artificial seeds are still rare in the literature and it is not known if such methodology is efficient with different Pogonomyrmex species. In this study carried out in a Neotropical arid environment of central Mexico, we tested a simple but fundamental question: Do harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) predate artificial seeds with manipulated nutrient content (lipids and proteins) in the field? We found that the proportion of native seeds removed was lower than the proportion of artificial seeds removed. However, we found no difference between the removal of artificial seeds containing only lipids and the seeds containing lipids + proteins. These findings indicate that the artificial seeds synthesized by us could be an effective method to test different ecological hypothesis involving harvester ants. Moreover, our empirical experiment offers a benchmark to study the influence of resource quality on the food foraging behavior of harvester ants in Neotropical arid environments.

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“…Ant species richness has usually been positively associated with habitat structure and its association is more pronounced at local scale, mainly at sites with higher resource availability, diversity of microhabitats and a greater number of nesting sites (Ribas et al, 2003;Marques & Del-Claro, 2006;Ribas & Schoereder, 2007;Pacheco & Vasconcelos, 2012;Fagundes et al, 2015). Arboreal ants, however, commonly show a strong territorial behavior (Schoener, 1970;Bernstein, 1975;Espírito-Santo et al, 2009;Ribeiro et al, 2013a;Dáttilo et al, 2015), and changes in vegetation structure due to ecological succession may result in an increase of aggression and monopolization of space, leading a shift in the species composition.…”

Section: Research Article -Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In these periods, when the resources are scarce and the abiotic conditions are stressful, arboreal ants could have different survival strategies, such as changing daily activity (e.g. diurnal to nocturnal pattern) (Dáttilo et al, 2015), expand the foraging area to alternative strata (e.g. vertical stratification) (Dejean et al, 2003;Campos et al, 2008;Silva et al, 2014), or move to more favorable adjacent habitats to search for resources (Neves et al, 2010b).…”

Section: Research Article -Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Composition and Richness of Arboreal ants in Fragments of Brazilian Caatinga: Effects of Secondary Succession

et al. 2016

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Ecological succession is a complex processes involving changes in the structure of plant community and it is an important factor determining the structure of arboreal ants assemblages, but little is known about the effects of succession on ant assemblages in regions of Tropical Dry Forests (TDFs), such as the Brazilian Caatinga. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of ecological succession on the richness and species composition of arboreal ants in fragments of Caatinga, testing the following hypothesis: i) the richness of arboreal ants increases along a gradient of forest succession, in response to tree richness and/or density; ii) species composition of arboreal ants differs among stages of forest succession due to differences in vegetation structure in theses stages. This study was conducted in 15 plots distributed in three areas with different stages of secondary succession (early, intermediate and late). Tree density and richness were used as surrogate of vegetation structure. Ants were sampled using the technique of beating the foliage and baited pitfall traps, where five trees were sampled per plot, totaling 75 individual trees sampled. We sampled 37 species of ants, distributed in 16 genera and five subfamilies. Ant richness differed among stages of succession and seasons, with higher number of species in the late succession and rainy period, also increasing with tree richness and density. Besides, there was a distinct composition of ant species among stages of succession and seasons. Results obtained in this study reinforce the importance of using ants as environmental bioindicators, since the sensitivity to environmental variations of this group enables us to differentiate early and late successional stages of forest succession in Caatinga environment.

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Secretory activity of extrafloral nectaries shaping multitrophic ant-plant-herbivore interactions in an arid environment

Cited by 57 publications

References 38 publications

Invertebrate community response to fire and rodent activity in the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts

Invertebrate community response to fire and rodent activity in the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts

A New Protocol Using Artificial Seeds to Evaluate Dietary Preferences of Harvester Ants in Semi-arid Environments

Composition and Richness of Arboreal ants in Fragments of Brazilian Caatinga: Effects of Secondary Succession

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