Ant community dynamics in the Big Thicket National Preserve of east Texas

Rare and extreme climatic events can leave important but difficult-to-study legacies for ecological communities. Theory suggests that the relative abundance and even presence of species in communities may be driven as much by historical contingencies associated with rare events as by filtering from average environmental conditions. Much of what we know about the consequences of extreme events comes from opportunistic studies, where ecologists were in the right place at the right time. Climate change forecasts for the 21st century include an increase in frequency of extreme events, and ecologists are increasingly called upon to predict their consequences. We must therefore exploit opportunities to quantify the ecological effects of climatic extremes when and where we can. This study examined how a rare and extreme forcing event – the unprecedented flooding associated with Hurricane Harvey – modified the composition of ant communities in east Texas. We surveyed ant communities of the Big ...