A large-scale assessment of ant diversity across the Brazilian Amazon Basin: integrating geographic, ecological, and morphological drivers of sampling bias

Tropical ecosystems are often biodiversity hotspots, and invertebrates represent the main underrepresented component of diversity in large-scale analyses. This problem is partly related to the scarcity of data widely available to conduct these studies and the lack of systematic organization of knowledge about invertebrates’ distributions in biodiversity hotspots. Here, we introduce and analyze a comprehensive data compilation of Amazonian ant diversity. Using records from 1817 to 2020 from both published and unpublished sources, we describe the diversity and distribution of ant species in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. Further, using high-definition images and data from taxonomic publications, we build a comprehensive database of morphological traits for the ant species that occur in the region. In total, we recorded 1,067 nominal species in the Brazilian Amazon Basin, with sampling locations strongly biased by access routes, urban centers, research institutions, and major infrastructure p...