Carval Dominique, Cotté Violaine, Resmond Rémi, Perrin Benjamin, Tixier Philippe
CIRAD UPR GECO Le Lamentin Martinique France.
CIRADUPR GECO Montpellier France; Departamento de Agricultura y Agroforesteria CATIE Turrialba Costa Rica.
Ecol Evol. 2016 Nov 11;6(23):8617-8631. doi: 10.1002/ece3.2570. eCollection 2016 Dec.
In tropical ecosystems, ants represent a substantial portion of the animal biomass and contribute to various ecosystem services, including pest regulation and pollination. Dominant ant species are known to determine the structure of ant communities by interfering in the foraging of other ant species. Using bait and pitfall trapping experiments, we performed a pattern analysis at a fine spatial scale of an ant community in a very simplified and homogeneous agroecosystem, that is, a single-crop banana field in Martinique (French West Indies). We found that the community structure was driven by three dominant species (, , and ) and two subdominant species ( and ). Our results showed that dominant and subdominant species generally maintained numerical dominance at baits across time, although , , and displayed better abilities to maintain dominance than and . Almost all interspecific correlations between species abundances, except those between and , were symmetrically negative, suggesting that interference competition prevails in this ground-dwelling ant community. However, we observed variations in the diurnal and nocturnal foraging activity and in the daily occurrence at baits, which may mitigate the effect of interference competition through the induction of spatial and temporal niche partitioning. This may explain the coexistence of dominant, subdominant, and subordinate species in this very simplified agroecosystem, limited in habitat structure and diversity.
在热带生态系统中,蚂蚁占动物生物量的很大一部分,并为多种生态系统服务做出贡献,包括害虫调控和授粉。已知优势蚁种会通过干扰其他蚁种的觅食来决定蚁群的结构。我们利用诱饵和陷阱诱捕实验,在一个非常简化且同质的农业生态系统(即马提尼克岛(法属西印度群岛)的单一作物香蕉园)中,对蚁群进行了精细空间尺度的格局分析。我们发现,该蚁群结构由三种优势蚁种(、和)以及两种亚优势蚁种(和)驱动。我们的结果表明,优势蚁种和亚优势蚁种通常在不同时间在诱饵处保持数量上的优势,尽管、和比和表现出更强的维持优势的能力。除了和之间的相关性外,几乎所有物种丰度之间的种间相关性均呈对称负相关,这表明干扰竞争在这个地面栖息蚁群中占主导地位。然而,我们观察到昼夜觅食活动以及在诱饵处的每日出现情况存在差异,这可能通过诱导空间和时间生态位分化来减轻干扰竞争的影响。这或许可以解释在这个栖息地结构和多样性有限的非常简化的农业生态系统中,优势、亚优势和从属蚁种共存的现象。