Grazing by large savanna herbivores indirectly alters ant diversity and promotes resource monopolisation.

ABSTRACT: In savannas, grazing is an important disturbance that modifies the grass layer structure and composition. Habitat structural complexity influences species diversity and assemblage functioning. By using a combination of natural sites and manipulated experiments, we explored how habitat structure (grazing lawns and adjacent bunch grass) affects ant diversity and foraging behaviour, specifically the efficiency of resource acquisition, resource monopolisation and ant body size. We found that in the natural sites there was no difference in the amount of time ants took to locate resources, but in the manipulated experiments, ants were faster at locating resources and were more abundant in the simple treatments than in the more complex treatments. Ant body size was only affected by the manipulate

SUBMITTER: Purdon J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6330944 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature