Secondary succession has surprisingly low impact on arboreal ant communities in tropical montane rainforest

Understanding forest regeneration processes is increasingly important as disturbed forests spread rapidly in tropical landscapes. While successional dynamics are relatively well-understood for plants, they remain poorly known for tropical insects, particularly in montane rainforests and tree canopies. We studied the effect of montane forest succession on arboreal ant communities in New Guinea near their natural elevational limit (1800 m a.s.l.). We censused ant species and nests in replicated 0.1 ha plots of primary, old and young secondary forests, destined to be felled for gardens by the local land-owners. Overall, 1249 felled trees were dissected for all ant-associated microhabitats. We used rarefaction-based models manipulating vegetation structure and multivariate randomizations to assess the effects of tree density, tree size and nesting microhabitats on the ant communities. We expected increased ant species diversity, microhabitat specialization and species turnover among trees t...