Effects of dominant ant species on ant community structure and ant-hemipteran interactions

Ants often interact aggressively for resources (e.g., nest sites and food) with members of their own or another species. In these competitive interactions, dominant ant species exert a strong influence on ant species coexistence and plant-associated arthropod community structure. However, few studies have experimentally manipulated the relative abundance of dominant ant species on plants, preventing a mechanistic understanding of the effects of ant competitive interactions on ant community structure as well as on their interactions with other insects, particularly mutualistic hemipterans. In this study, we performed a field experiment in a tropical dry forest in Brazil to investigate the effects of two dominant ant species (Camponotus crassus and Cephalotes pusillus) on the structure of ant communities and the abundance of the ant-tended hemipteran Enchenopa brasiliensis in the tropical shrub Solanum lycocarpum. For this, we identified and quantified all ant species foraging on S. lycoc..., Study area
This study was carried out in a transitional area from cerrado sensu stricto to open areas in the Private Natural Heritage Reserve of Clube de Caça e Pesca Itororó de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Brazil (48º17'27.0'' W; 18º58' 30.6'' S). The study area had ~230 ha of cerrado sensu stricto vegetation (Oliveira and Marquis 2002). Open areas consisted of shrubs and small trees, whereas more enclosed areas consisted of trees reaching up to 15 meters in height (Del-Claro et al. 2019). The climate is markedly seasonal with the rainy season from October to March, and the dry season from April to September. The annual mean temperature varies from 18 º C to 28º C and the rainfall from 800 to 2,000 mm (Calixto et al. 2021a, b).
Study species
Solanum lycocarpum is a woody shrub commonly found in open areas of the cerrado with environmental disturbances, reaching 1 to 3 m in height (Fig. 1A). This species has hollow trunks, continuous flowering, a berry-like fruit, absence of extrafloral nec..., We performed all analyses using R software version 4.0.1 (R Core Team 2020).