Interested in receiving weekly updates on Myrmecol. News & Myrmecol. News Blog? Follow the link & subscribe: https://myrmecologicalnews.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1502&Itemid=326

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25849/myrmecol.news_035:061

Open Access: CC BY 4.0

Author:

Hovorková, M., Holec, M., Mudrák,O. & Frouz, J.



Year: 2025

Title:

Consistent successional trajectories of ant species richness, composition, and functional traits on post-mining sites in European deciduous forest



Journal: Myrmecological News

Volume: 35

Pages: 61-71

Type of contribution: Original Article

Supplementary material: Yes

Abstract:

Since ants are a prominent taxon of terrestrial food webs and significant ecosystem engineers, understanding ant community succession is important to understand ecosystem recovery after disturbance. We studied the succession of ant communities on brown coal mine spoil heaps in mixed deciduous forests of NW Czech Republic by censusing multiple sites in which assemblages differed in age between 1 and 50 years since initial spoil heap formation. We compared the species composition, ant traits, and habitat characteristics of chronosequences of reclaimed and unreclaimed sites and undisturbed reference sites in the surrounding landscape in the years 2001 and 2020. Although habitat characteristics such as canopy and bare soil cover were important, successional age was the single strongest predictor of ant species richness and composition, suggesting a similar successional trajectory of sites. The number of ant species, but not their total abundance, increased during succession. The composition of the ant community changed towards that of the referential surrounding landscape, where less aggressive species were common. During the early successional stages, the common species had queens which establish colonies independently by enclosing themselves in a founding chamber and relying on stored resources (claustral mode). During later successional stages, the common species had queens which establish colonies by leaving the founding chamber to forage for food (semi-claustral mode). Species of social parasites were also more common in late versus early successional stages. These results suggest that resource availability to ants increases during succession, which may enhance species coexistence. The rate of change in ant species richness and composition was high at young sites and slowed down with site age. As forest stands aged through the successional sequence, the abundance of forest ant species increased. We did not record differences in species richness between reclaimed and unreclaimed sites. Eurytopic species were the most numerous, but their abundance did not change significantly during succession. Collectively, these results suggest that as forest stands age and canopies close, ant species richness and composition consistently change, with potentially more resources and more complex species interactions in later stages.

Open access, licensed under CC BY 4.0. © 2025 The Author(s).



Key words:

Ants, chronosequence, Formicidae, functional traits, Hymenoptera, post-mining site, succession



Publisher: The Austrian Society of Entomofaunistics

ISSN: 1997-3500

Check out the accompanying blog contribution: https://blog.myrmecologicalnews.org/2025/01/28/ants-to-the-rescue-how-spoil-heaps-turn-into-thriving-ecosystems/


Preview not available.