Distribution of ant assemblage, microclimate and microhabitat along vertical gradients

Abiotic and biotic factors structure species assembly in ecosystems both horizontally and vertically. However, the way community composition changes along comparable horizontal and vertical distances in complex three-dimensional habitats, and the factors driving these patterns, remains poorly understood. By sampling ant assemblages at comparable vertical and horizontal spatial scales in a tropical rain forest, we tested hypotheses that predicted differences in vertical and horizontal turnover explained by different drivers in vertical and horizontal space. These drivers included environmental filtering, such as microclimate (temperature, humidity, and photosynthetic photon flux density) and microhabitat connectivity (leaf area) which are structured differently across vertical and horizontal space. We found that both ant abundance and richness decreased significantly with increasing vertical height. Although dissimilarity between ant assemblages increased with vertical distance, indicati...