Functional groups of ants in a Neotropical rainforest

Tropical rainforest ants are species rich, abundant and certain species ecologically dominant. Here, we focus this study on ant species living on the ground and in the leaf-litter, on understory plants and in the canopy in an Amazonian rainforest. We used only two sampling techniques, Winkler extraction for ground-dwelling ants and direct observations for understory and canopy species. This permitted us to identified 494 ant species from 10 subfamilies and 77 genera (Chao1 = 607 species, CI95% 566-670) over ≈3.0 ha.