Ants in the New York Pine Barrens 2012-2013

Ants are ecologically important, environmentally sensitive, widespread, and abundant, yet ant assemblages of many habitats remain poorly understood. This is true of inland pine barrens in the northeastern United States. In the Northeast, such barrens support uncommon ant species and high species density for the region. Ants in inland barrens of New York State barely have been studied. To increase knowledge of these assemblages, I systematically collected ants from three NY inland barrens and investigated how hiking trails--a common man-made disturbance--may be impacting ant assemblages in these early-successional, disturbance-dependent ecosystems. My data strongly indicate uncommonly high densities of ant species in NY pine barrens, including the most northern known occurrences of two species, and show that hiking trails alter ant assemblage composition and species density.