Data from: Strong but taxon-specific responses of termites and wood-nesting ants to forest regeneration in Borneo

Land use change is accelerating globally at the expense of biodiversity
and ecosystem functioning. Invertebrates are numerically dominant and
functionally important in old growth tropical rain forests but highly
susceptible to the adverse effects of forest degradation and
fragmentation. Ants (Formicidae) and termites (Blattodea: Termitoidae)
perform crucial ecosystem services. Here, the potential effects of
anthropogenic disturbance on ant and termite communities in dead wood are
investigated. Community composition, generic richness, and occupancy rates
of ants and termites were compared among two old growth sites (Danum
Valley and Maliau Basin) and one twice-logged site (the Stability of
Altered Forest Ecosystems’ (SAFE) Project), in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.
Occupancy was measured as the number of ant or termite encounters (1) per
deadwood items, and (2) per deadwood volume, and acts as surrogates for
relative abundance (or generic richness). Termites had a lower
wood-occupancy per volume in logged forest. In contrast, there were more
ant encounters, and more ant genera, in logged sites and there was a
community shift (especially, there were more Crematogaster encounters).
The disruption of soil and canopy structure in logged forest may reduce
both termite and fungal decay rates, inducing increased deadwood residence
times and therefore favoring ants that nest in dead wood. There is an
anthropogenic-induced shift of dead wood in ants and termites in response
to disturbance in tropical rain forests and the nature of that shift is
taxon-specific.