Hethcoat, M.G. orcid.org/0000-0002-5680-0635, King, B.J., Castiblanco, F.F. et al. (7 more authors) (2019) The impact of secondary forest regeneration on ground-dwelling ant communities in the Tropical Andes. Oecologia, 191 (2). pp. 475-482. ISSN 0029-8549
Abstract
Natural regeneration of abandoned farmland provides an important opportunity to contribute to global reforestation targets, including the Bonn Challenge. Of particular importance are the montane tropics, where a long history of farming, frequently on marginal soils, has rendered many ecosystems highly degraded and hotspots of extinction risk. Ants play crucial roles in ecosystem functioning, and a key question is how time since abandonment and elevation (and inherent temperature gradients therein) affect patterns of ant recovery within secondary forest systems. Focusing on the Colombian Andes across a 1300 m altitudinal gradient and secondary forest (2–30 years) recovering on abandoned cattle pastures, we find that over time ant community composition and species richness recovered towards that of primary forest. However, these relationships are strongly dependent on elevation with the more open and warmer pasturelands supporting more ants than either primary or secondary forest at a particular elevation. The loss of species richness and change in species composition with elevation is less severe in pasture than forests, suggesting that conditions within pasture and its remaining scattered trees, hedgerows and forest fragments, are more favourable for some species, which are likely in or near thermal debt. Promoting and protecting natural regenerating forests over the long term in the montane tropics will likely offer significant potential for returning ant communities towards primary forest levels.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Cattle pasture; Cloud forest; Formicidae; Surface-active ants; Natural regeneration; Secondary forest |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 02 Oct 2020 13:31 |
Last Modified: | 02 Oct 2020 15:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s00442-019-04497-8 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165166 |