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.

蚂蚁在生态系统中具有重要生态功能，对环境变化敏感，且分布广泛、种群数量庞大，但当前人们对诸多生境中的蚁类群落仍知之甚少。美国东北部内陆松林荒地区便是其中之一。在东北部地区，这类松林荒地孕育着该区域罕见的蚁类物种，同时拥有较高的物种密度。纽约州内陆松林荒地中的蚁类几乎未被系统研究过。为增进对这类蚁类群落的认知，本研究从纽约州的三处内陆松林荒地中系统采集蚁类样本，并探究了徒步步道——一种常见的人为干扰——如何影响这类早期演替、依赖干扰的生态系统中的蚁类群落结构。研究数据有力表明，纽约州松林荒地中的蚁类物种密度异常之高，其中包含两个物种目前已知的最北部分布记录；同时还证实，徒步步道会改变蚁类群落组成与物种密度。