对澳大利亚热带草原蚂蚁的镇压表明,“小统治者”并不统治蜘蛛或甲虫的聚集

IF 2.9 3区 环境科学与生态学 Q2 ECOLOGY
Ecosphere Pub Date : 2025-07-27 DOI:10.1002/ecs2.70354
Sarah N. Bonney, Benjamin D. Hoffmann, Alan N. Andersen
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引用次数: 0

摘要

蚂蚁通常被称为“统治世界的小东西”,因为它们作为生态系统工程师,通过营养和非营养的相互作用发挥着关键作用。我们描述了蚂蚁对澳大利亚热带稀树草原上蜘蛛和甲虫影响的实验测试。我们在两个地点(领土野生动物园[TWP]和热带生态系统研究中心[TERC])的6个样地(每个样地与相邻的参考样地相匹配)实验中通过诱饵抑制蚂蚁丰度,并记录了对地面和树栖蜘蛛和甲虫群落的影响。在TWP遗址,蚂蚁数量丰富,种类多样,以侵略性强的Iridomyrmex种类为主。蚂蚁多样性较低,Iridomyrmex丰度较低。在TWP站点,抑制处理主要影响了虹膜螟的种类,使地面蚂蚁总丰度降低了52% ~ 77%,但由于虹膜螟很少在乔木上活动,因此对植被没有影响。抑制处理对TERC场地地面和植被的蚂蚁丰度影响不大。尽管TWP的地面上有明显的蚂蚁抑制,但两年后我们观察到蜘蛛或甲虫的反应很少。在蜘蛛中,唯一的反应是与蚂蚁相关的Prodidomidae家族的数量减少了50%。一种甲虫科(金龟科)在蚂蚁抑制后也有所下降,但怀疑是诱饵的非目标伤亡。没有蜘蛛或甲虫科显示出我们预测的丰度增加。奇怪的是,尽管蚂蚁受到了最小程度的抑制,但在TERC,蜘蛛家族俱乐部的蚂蚁数量却有所增加。在这两个地点,实验处理对植被上的蜘蛛和甲虫几乎没有影响,这与对植物上的蚂蚁没有抑制一致。蚂蚁抑制作用的普遍缺乏表明,在我们的研究系统中,蚂蚁对节肢动物群落的调节令人惊讶地有限。这与其他蚂蚁操纵实验的结果形成鲜明对比,尤其令人惊讶的是,澳大利亚大草原上的蚂蚁数量如此之多。虽然我们的实验涉及抑制蚂蚁而不是消除蚂蚁,但我们的结果表明,澳大利亚的稀树草原对普遍存在的动物群的大量减少具有弹性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。

Suppression of Australian savanna ants shows “the little rulers” do not rule over spider or beetle assemblages

Suppression of Australian savanna ants shows “the little rulers” do not rule over spider or beetle assemblages

Suppression of Australian savanna ants shows “the little rulers” do not rule over spider or beetle assemblages

Suppression of Australian savanna ants shows “the little rulers” do not rule over spider or beetle assemblages

Suppression of Australian savanna ants shows “the little rulers” do not rule over spider or beetle assemblages

Ants are often referred to as “the little things that rule the world” because of the critical roles they play as ecosystem engineers and through trophic and non-trophic interactions. We describe an experimental test of the influence of ants on spiders and beetles in an Australian tropical savanna. We experimentally suppressed ant abundance through baiting in six plots, each matched with adjacent reference plots, across two sites (Territory Wildlife Park [TWP] and Tropical Ecosystem Research Centre [TERC]), and documented the impact on ground and arboreal spider and beetle communities. At the TWP site, ants were highly abundant and diverse, dominated by species of aggressive Iridomyrmex. Ant diversity was lower and Iridomyrmex low in abundance at the TERC site. At the TWP site, suppression treatment predominantly affected species of Iridomyrmex, reducing overall ant abundance on the ground by 52%–77%, but because few Iridomyrmex forgage arboreally, there was no change on vegetation. Suppression treatment had little effect on ant abundance on both the ground and vegetation at the TERC site. Despite marked ant suppression on the ground at TWP, we observed little response from either spiders or beetles after two years. Among spiders, the only response was a decrease (by 50%) in abundance of the ant-associated family Prodidomidae. One beetle family (Scarabaeidae) also declined after ant suppression but was a suspected nontarget casualty of baiting. No spider or beetle family showed the increase in abundance that we predicted. Curiously, an increase was shown by the spider family Clubionidae at TERC despite minimal ant suppression. At both sites, experimental treatment had little influence on spiders and beetles on vegetation, consistent with the lack of suppression of ants on plants. The general lack of effect of ant suppression implies that there is surprisingly limited regulation of arthropod communities by ants in our study system. This contrasts with findings from other ant manipulation experiments and is particularly surprising as ant abundance is so high in Australian savannas. While our experiment involved ant suppression rather than elimination, our results suggest that Australian savannas are resilient to large reductions of a ubiquitous faunal group.

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来源期刊
Ecosphere
Ecosphere ECOLOGY-
CiteScore
4.70
自引率
3.70%
发文量
378
审稿时长
15 weeks
期刊介绍: The scope of Ecosphere is as broad as the science of ecology itself. The journal welcomes submissions from all sub-disciplines of ecological science, as well as interdisciplinary studies relating to ecology. The journal''s goal is to provide a rapid-publication, online-only, open-access alternative to ESA''s other journals, while maintaining the rigorous standards of peer review for which ESA publications are renowned.
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