Common ant species dominate morphospace: unraveling the morphological diversity in the Brazilian Amazon Basin

Rare plant and vertebrate species have been documented to contribute disproportionately to the total morphological structure of species assemblages. These species often possess morphologically extreme traits and occupy the boundaries of morphological space. As rare species are at greater risk of extinction than more widely distributed species, human-induced disturbances can strongly affect ecosystem functions related to assemblage morphology. Here, we assess to what extent the distributions of ant morphological traits are supported by morphologically extreme species and how they are distributed among habitats in a global biodiversity hotspot, the Brazilian Amazon. We used a morphological database comprising 15 continuous morphological traits and 977 expert-validated ant species distributed across the Brazilian Amazon. We produced species range estimates using species distribution models or alpha hulls (when few records were available). Next, we conducted a principal components analysis ..., Occurrence and Morphological Datasets
The primary occurrence database comprises historical and current ant records for the Brazilian Amazon (from 1817 to 2020). Data were obtained from the Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics project (GABI: Guénard et al. 2017; but also see database treatment in Andrade-Silva et al. 2022). We updated this dataset by incorporating new literature published in 2021 and 2022. Valid species names were based on the Online Catalog of the Ants of the World (AntCat: Bolton 2022, last checked in November 2022). We only considered nominal ant taxa (valid species and subspecies); informal taxa (morphospecies) were not included.
We developed the morphological database from a set of 977 ant species (about 91% of the species recorded for the Brazilian Amazon Basin) and measured 15 continuous morphological traits, including HW = Head width; HL = Head length; CL = Clypeus length; ML = Mandible length; MW = Mandible width; FL = Hind femur length; SL = Scape length; WL = W..., , # Common ant species dominate morphospace: unraveling the morphological diversity in the Brazilian Amazon Basin

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pg4f4qrzf](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pg4f4qrzf)

Data on ant occurrence by vegetation types (Appendix table S1) and morphological measurements of ant species (Appendix table S2) were recorded in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. Morphological traits were delimited by the first four axes of a principal component analysis (PCA) and were used in the manuscript \"Common ant species dominate morphospace: unraveling the morphological diversity in the Brazilian Amazon Basin\". Morphological measurements taken for ant species included: HW = Head width; HL = Head length; CL = Clypeus length; ML = Mandible length; MW = Mandible width; FL = Hind femur length; SL = Scape length; WL = Weber’s length; ID = Inter-ocular distance; EL = Eyes length; PrW = Pronotum width; DEM = Distance of eye to mandible insertion; PeL = Petiole length; PeW = Petiole width; PeH = Pe...