Drought and presence of ants can influence hemipitera in tropical leaf litter

Climate change is predicted to impact tropical rainforests, with droughts becoming more frequent and more severe in some regions. We currently have a poor understanding of how increased drought will change the functioning of tropical rainforest. In particular, tropical rainforest invertebrates, which are numerous and biologically important, may respond to drought in different ways across trophic levels. Ants are a diverse group that carry out important ecosystem processes, shaping ecosystem structure and function through predation and competition, which can influence multiple trophic levels. Hemiptera are a mega-diverse order, abundant in tropical rainforests and are ecologically important. To understand the roles of ants in exerting predation and competition pressure on invertebrates in tropical rainforests during drought and a post-drought period, we established a large-scale ecosystem manipulation experiment in Maliau Basin Conservation Area in Malaysian Borneo, suppressing the activ...