Ants of the State of Pará, Brazil: a historical and comprehensive dataset of a key biodiversity hotspot in the Amazon Basin

The state of Pará in northern Brazil is located entirely within the Amazon Basin and harbors a great diversity of landscape and vegetation types that support high levels of biodiversity. Here, we provide a comprehensive inventory of ant species and their distribution in Pará. This regional list is based on an extensive review of species records from published and unpublished sources covering a period of 134 years (1886–2020) and includes the five most representative ant collections in Brazil. In total, we documented 12 subfamilies, 90 genera and 753 ant species, including 97 species recorded for the first time in Pará and 12 species newly reported in Brazil. Sampling effort across the state is highly uneven, and most records may be associated with research areas near the state capital, mining areas, hydroelectric dams, and research field stations run by the state or universities. In addition, our results suggest a strong bias in ant collection in Pará in terms of proximity of sampled sites to access routes, such as roads and rivers. We also found that species records were highly unevenly distributed based on areas of endemism within the Amazon, vegetation type, and protected areas within the state. Ant surveys are still lacking from most protected areas of Pará, and further sampling is urgently needed in view of the current trend of expansion of major infrastructure projects and natural resource harvesting within protected areas of Pará. Our database represents an extremely valuable and rich source of information for further studies on ant biodiversity and conservation in the Amazon Basin.

巴西北部的帕拉州全境坐落于亚马孙流域范围内，拥有极其多样的景观与植被类型，孕育了高度丰富的生物多样性。在此，我们编制了帕拉州蚂蚁物种及其分布的综合名录。本区域名录基于对1886年至2020年共计134年间已发表及未发表的物种记录的全面梳理，涵盖了巴西最具代表性的5个蚂蚁标本馆藏。总计记录了12个亚科、90个属以及753种蚂蚁，其中包含97种首次在帕拉州被记录的物种，以及12种巴西新记录物种。该州境内的采样投入极不均衡，多数记录均与州首府周边研究区域、矿区、水电站大坝，以及该州或高校运营的野外研究站相关。此外，本研究结果显示，帕拉州的蚂蚁标本采集存在显著偏差：采样点与道路、河流等通行路线的邻近程度会显著影响采样记录的分布。我们还发现，基于亚马孙流域的特有分布区、植被类型以及该州内的保护区，物种记录的分布同样极不均衡。帕拉州多数保护区仍未开展系统性的蚂蚁调查工作，鉴于当前帕拉州保护区内大型基础设施项目扩张与自然资源开发的趋势，亟需开展进一步的采样工作。本数据库可为亚马孙流域蚂蚁生物多样性与保护相关的后续研究提供极为宝贵且丰富的信息资源。