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

• Published in: PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2019-01, Vol.7, p.e6255, Article e6255
• Main Authors: Castillo-Guevara, Citlalli, Cuautle, Mariana, Lara, Carlos, Juárez-Juárez, Brenda
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agricultural land; Animal Behavior; Ant communities; Biodiversity; Coexistence; Competition; Conservation Biology; Discovery-dominance trade-off; Dominance hierarchies; Ecology; Ecosystems; Experiments; Field study; Food; Food preferences; Foraging behavior; Foraging preferences; Functional groups; Habitats; Honey; Land use; Lasius; Mexico; Myrmicinae; Numerical dominance; Pheidole; Rare species; Resource partitioning; Temperature; Vegetation
• ISSN: 2167-8359; 2167-8359
• DOI: 10.7717/peerj.6255

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. 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 preferences and discovery-dominance trade-offs of ants inhabiting two types of vegetation: a native oak forest and agricultural land resulting from agricultural land use and grazing. The ant communities in both environments were comprised of three species of ants ( , and ), four morphospecies ( sp.1 and sp.2, sp. and sp.) and one genus ( spp.). All Formicidae showed values of intermediate to low DI, and this factor did not seem to be influenced by the change in land use. Ants in the modified vegetation (i.e., agricultural land) were found to be numerically greater. Overall, a higher number of visits were registered to the tuna bait, although the duration of foraging events to the honey baits was longer. However, foraging times were dependent on the species considered: the generalized Myrmicinae, , the ant species with highest DI, foraged for longer periods of time in the agricultural land and on the tuna bait. Meanwhile, the cold-climate specialist spp., with a lower DI, foraged for longer periods of time in the oak (although not significant) and on the honey bait. We found little evidence of the discovery-dominance trade-off; instead, we found considerable diversity in the strategies used by the different species to access resources. This range of strategies is well represented by the generalized Myrmicinae , the cold-climate specialists spp. and sp., and the rare species, as the cold climate specialist sp. (insinuators). Our evaluation shows that transformation of the original habitat does not appear to affect the hierarchical dominance of the ant communities, but it does affect their food preferences. Species with higher DI values such as the generalized Myrmicinae are more skilled at resource acquisitio