Environmental determinants of leaf-litter ant community composition along an elevational gradient

Ant communities are extremely diverse and provide a wide variety
of ecological functions in tropical forests. Here we investigated the
abiotic factors driving ant composition turnover across an elevational
gradient at Mont Itoupé, French Guiana. Mont Itoupé is an isolated mountain
whose top is covered by cloud forests, a biogeographical rarity that is
likely to be threatened according to climate change scenarios in the
region. We examined the influence of six soil, climatic and LiDAR-derived
vegetation structure variables on leaf-litter ant assembly (267 species)
across nine 0.12-ha plots disposed at three elevations (ca. 400, 600 and
800m asl). We tested (a) whether species co-occurring within a same plot or
a same elevation were more similar in terms of taxonomic, functional and
phylogenetic composition, than species from different plots/elevations, and
(b) which environmental variables significantly explained compositional
turnover among plots. We found that the distribution of speci...