BayCEER Workshop 2016

Functional trait diversity of ant communities between land-use types

Introduction

Ants are an important functional group of temperate forest and grassland ecosystems. Land-use intensification has been shown to negatively influence species diversity. As species with particular traits, i.e. larger species, are lost from communities functional diversity decreases. While these patterns are well studied for some taxa, the effects of land-use intensification on functional diversity of ant communities are quite unknown.

Material and Methods

To investigate the changes in ant communities, we sampled ants in 150 forest plots (100mx100m) using pitfall traps (3 traps / plot) in all three regions within the Biodiversity Exploratories (BE) project. Plots comprise different land use types such as unmanaged forests and uneven-aged and even-aged managed forest. At each site, we identified the ant species and measured morphological traits to characterize functional trait diversity.

Results

Ant species richness in a subset of plots (VIP plots) was quite low in the Exloratory Schwäbische Alb with a mean ± SD = 2.1 ± 1.0 ant species per plot only likewise in the Exploratory Hainich with 2.3 ± 1.9 ant species. Species richness was significantly higher in the Exploratory Schorfheide with 9.4 ± 4.2 ant species per plot. This is in contrast to the ant species richness found in grasslands of the BE where ant species richness was highest in the Exploratory Schwäbische Alb and lowest in the Exploratory Schorfheide. Thereby, we found a strong turnover of species richness between the forests and grasslands within regions. While ants of Formica spp. were abundant in the Exploratory Schorfheide both other Exploratories were dominated by Myrmica spp..

Conclusions

Thus functional diversity differs strongly among the regions and an increase of land-use intensity results in increased species homogenization. We will compare functional trait diversity between ant communities in forest plots as well as with those from the grassland plots of the BE as well as along a gradient of land use intensity.