Effect of agricultural land-use change on ant dominance hierarchy and food preferences in a temperate oak forest.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The discovery-dominance trade-off is the inverse relationship between the ability of a species to discover resources and the species' dominance of those resources; a paradigm used to explain species coexistence in ant communities dependent on similar resources. However, factors such as stress (e.g., temperature) or disturbance (e.g., removal of biomass) associated with the change in land use, can modify this trade-off. Here, we aimed to determine the potential effects of land use change on dominance hierarchy, food preferences and on the discovery-dominance trade-off.

Methods

An experiment with baits was used to investigate the dominance hierarchies of ant communities in a temperate mountain habitat in central Mexico. We evaluated the dominance index (DI), food pr

SUBMITTER: Castillo-Guevara C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6336009 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature