Ant Functional Diversity in Temperate Zone Forests: A Comparison with Neotropical Ants

The influence of regional and local processes on community structure is a
major focus of ecology. The relative importance of regional and local processes
are believed to differ between tropical and temperate environments. In the
present study we compared the morphological space and functional diversity
between ant communities in tropical and temperate forests. Further, we used a
trait-based approach to determine the relative importance of niche and
environmental filters in determining ant community structure, comparing trait
dispersion between tropical and temperate regions. Finally, we used abiotic and
biotic factors to modeling species and community functional responses to
environmental gradients across sites with clearly different environmental
conditions. We surveyed ant communities at 26 sites along a latitudinal gradient
of twenty degrees in the Atlantic forest (Brazil) and at 67 sites along a
latitudinal gradient of ten degrees in temperate forests (Northeastern United
States). We used mini-winklers apparatuses to sample leaf-litter ants in
tropical forests, pitfall traps and systematic hand collecting to sample ants in
temperate forests. We measured fifteen morphological traits on the basis of
their function in 550 tropical ant species and 100 temperate ant species. Our
morphological data set comprises 31,000 measures from 650 ant species,
representing 1,994 individuals from neotropics and 583 ant individuals from
temperate-zone forests. We expected that our results will allow us to identify
the major functional traits and environmental factors involved in the assembly
of tropical and temperate ant communities. The relationship between species
richness and the morphological space occupied can provide insights into the
processes that shape patterns of ant biodiversity.