Preference for mammalian urine is higher in the canopy than on the ground in a tropical rainforest ant community in Yunnan, China

Ants are among the most abundant groups of arthropods, and approximately half of all ant species are associated with forest canopies. The forest canopy environment is distinct from the understory and forest floor, and vertical stratification in environmental conditions shapes species assembly and organismal traits and behaviors across taxa in forest communities. Canopy ants are faced with a more nitrogen-limited environment compared with ground ants because of their reliance on nitrogen-poor plant and insect exudates. Despite prior work suggesting that some ant species consume mammalian urine and use symbiotic bacteria to extract nitrogen, we have little knowledge about the consumption of urine in canopy ants or the relative preference for urine between ground and canopy ants. We conducted an observational field experiment in a lowland tropical rainforest in southern China to test for vertical stratification in ant preference for sugar and urine, setting ground and canopy baited pitfall..., See the associated manuscript for detailed methods of data collection.
In brief, ants were collected in the canopy and the ground from (or below) 12 trees in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China, using liquid baited pitfall traps with three different food sources (sugar water, urine water, and water)., , This revised README file was generated on 2024-03-04 by Benjamin D. Blanchard.

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Preference for mammalian urine is higher in the canopy than on the ground in a tropical rainforest ant community in Yunnan, China

2. Author Information
A. Corresponding Author Contact Information
Name: Benjamin D. Blanchard
Institution: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS
Address: CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, XTBG, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

3. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): 2022

4. Geographic location of data collection: Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China

5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: CAS PIFI 2021PB0085, NSFC International (Regional) Cooperation and Exchange Project 32161160324, and Advanced Field Course in Ecology and Conservation (XTBG, ...