Ants are the major agents of resource removal from tropical rainforests.

ABSTRACT: Ants are diverse and abundant, especially in tropical ecosystems. They are often cited as the agents of key ecological processes, but their precise contributions compared with other organisms have rarely been quantified. Through the removal of food resources from the forest floor and subsequent transport to nests, ants play an important role in the redistribution of nutrients in rainforests. This is an essential ecosystem process and a key energetic link between higher trophic levels, decomposers and primary producers. We used the removal of carbohydrate, protein and seed baits as a proxy to quantify the contribution that ants, other invertebrates and vertebrates make to the redistribution of nutrients around the forest floor, and determined to what extent there is functional redundancy ac

SUBMITTER: Griffiths HM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6849798 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature