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Ant community structure along an extended rain forest–savanna gradient in tropical Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

Laura T. van Ingen ,
Ricardo I. Campos  and
Alan N. Andersen
Laura T. van Ingen
Affiliation:
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre, PMB 44 Winnellie, NT 0822, Australia Institut Méditerranéen d'Ecologie et de Paléoécologie, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques de Saint-Jérôme, Université Paul-Cézanne Aix-Marseille 3, 13397 Marseille Cedex 20, France
Ricardo I. Campos
Affiliation:
Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU), Campus Umuarama, C.P. 593, 38400-902 Uberlândia, MG, Brazil
Alan N. Andersen*
Affiliation:
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre, PMB 44 Winnellie, NT 0822, Australia
*
1Corresponding author. Email: Alan.Andersen@csiro.au
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Abstract

In mixed tropical landscapes, savanna and rain-forest vegetation often support contrasting biotas, and this is the case for ant communities in tropical Australia. Such a contrast is especially pronounced in monsoonal north-western Australia, where boundaries between rain forest and savanna are often extremely abrupt. However, in the humid tropics of north-eastern Queensland there is often an extended gradient between rain forest and savanna through eucalypt-dominated tall open forest. It is not known if ant community structure varies continuously along this gradient, or, if there is a major disjunction, where it occurs. We address this issue by sampling ants at ten sites distributed along a 6-km environmental gradient from rain forest to savanna, encompassing the crest and slopes of Mt. Lewis in North Queensland. Sampling was conducted using ground and baited arboreal pitfall traps, and yielded a total of 95 ant species. Mean trap species richness was identical in rain forest and rain-forest regrowth, somewhat higher in tall open forest, and twice as high again in savanna woodland. The great majority (78%) of the 58 species from savanna woodland were recorded only in this habitat type. MDS ordination of sites based on ant species composition showed a continuum from rain forest through rain-forest regrowth to tall open forest, and then a discontinuity between these habitat types and savanna woodland. These findings indicate that the contrast between rain forest and savanna ant communities in tropical Australia is an extreme manifestation of a broader forest-savanna disjunction.

Keywords

environmental gradientforest–savanna disjunctionfunctional groupsQueenslandspecies richness
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , July 2008 , pp. 445 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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