Local and regional drivers of ant communities in forest-grassland ecotones in South Brazil: A taxonomic and phylogenetic approach.

ABSTRACT: Understanding biological community distribution patterns and their drivers across different scales is one of the major goals of community ecology in a rapidly changing world. Considering natural forest-grassland ecotones distributed over the south Brazilian region we investigated how ant communities are assembled locally, i.e. considering different habitats, and regionally, i.e. considering different physiographic regions. We used taxonomic and phylogenetic approaches to investigate diversity patterns and search for environmental/spatial drivers at each scale. We sampled ants using honey and tuna baits in forest and grassland habitats, in ecotones distributed at nine sites in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. Overall, we found 85 ant species belonging to 23 genera and six subfamilies. At th

SUBMITTER: Drose W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6459495 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature