Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Sevilla, Spain.
Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Science, Warszawa, Poland.
PLoS One. 2022 Apr 29;17(4):e0267547. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267547. eCollection 2022.
Temperature and competition are two of the main factors determining ant community assemblages. Temperature may allow species to forage more or less efficiently throughout the day (in accordance with the maximum activity temperature of each species). Competition can be observed and quantified from species replacements occurring during resource exploitation. We studied the interspecific competitive interactions of ant communities from the Doñana Biological Reserve (southern Spain). Ants were sampled from pitfall traps and baits in three habitats with contrasted vegetation physiognomy (savin forest, pine forest, and dry scrubland). We measured the temperature during the competitive interactions between species and created a thermal competition index (TCI) to assess the relative contribution of temperature and numerical dominance to the competitive outcomes. Temperature had unequal effects on ant activity in each type of habitat, and modulated competitive interactions. The TCI showed that a species' success during pair interactions (replacements at baits) was driven by the proportion of workers between the two competing species and by the species-specific effect of temperature (how advantageous the temperature change is for each species during bait replacement). During competitive interactions, the effect of temperature (higher values of TCI) and numeric supremacy (higher worker proportion) gave higher success probabilities. Interspecific competitive relationships in these Mediterranean ant communities are habitat dependent and greatly influenced by temperature.
温度和竞争是决定蚂蚁群落组合的两个主要因素。温度可能会影响物种在一天中觅食的效率（根据每个物种的最高活动温度）。竞争可以通过资源利用过程中发生的物种替代来观察和量化。我们研究了来自多纳纳生物保护区（西班牙南部）的蚂蚁群落的种间竞争相互作用。从三个具有不同植被外貌的栖息地（油松林、松树林和干旱灌丛）的陷阱和诱饵中采集了蚂蚁样本。我们测量了种间竞争过程中的温度，并创建了一个热竞争指数（TCI），以评估温度和数量优势对竞争结果的相对贡献。温度对每种栖息地的蚂蚁活动有不同的影响，并调节了竞争相互作用。TCI 表明，在成对相互作用（诱饵替换）中，一个物种的成功取决于两个竞争物种之间的工蚁比例，以及特定物种的温度效应（在诱饵替换过程中，温度变化对每个物种的有利程度）。在竞争相互作用中，温度（更高的 TCI 值）和数量优势（更高的工蚁比例）的影响赋予了更高的成功概率。这些地中海蚂蚁群落中的种间竞争关系依赖于栖息地，并受温度的极大影响。
