Smith Chris R
School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2009 Jul;2009(7):pdb.prot5241. doi: 10.1101/pdb.prot5241.
Ants are among the most dominant taxa in terrestrial ecosystems, despite their small individual size. Furthermore, they are a hyperdiverse family with an estimated 20,000 species. Together, these two properties make ants a model for ecological interactions (specifically competition) and biodiversity estimation. Although there are many means of measuring diversity, the two most common among myrmecologists are baiting and pitfall trapping. Pitfall traps provide an almost unbiased estimate of the ground foraging community, whereas baiting allows the estimation of ecological dominance and the competitive outcomes between species. This protocol describes an approach to assay both abundance (pitfall traps) and ecological interactions (baits) in the same community.
尽管蚂蚁个体微小，但它们却是陆地生态系统中最具优势的类群之一。此外，蚂蚁是一个超级多样化的科，估计有20000个物种。这两个特性共同使蚂蚁成为生态相互作用（特别是竞争）和生物多样性估计的一个模型。虽然有许多测量多样性的方法，但在蚁学家中最常用的两种方法是诱饵法和陷阱诱捕法。陷阱诱捕法能对地面觅食群落提供几乎无偏差的估计，而诱饵法可用于估计生态优势以及物种间的竞争结果。本方案描述了一种在同一群落中测定丰度（陷阱诱捕法）和生态相互作用（诱饵法）的方法。
