Resource use and food preferences in understory ant communities along a complete elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60076658%3A12310%2F18%3A43897225" target="_blank" >RIV/60076658:12310/18:43897225 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/btp.12539" target="_blank" >https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/btp.12539</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/btp.12539" target="_blank" >10.1111/btp.12539</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Resource use and food preferences in understory ant communities along a complete elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea

Original language description

Elevational gradients provide an interesting opportunity for studying the effect of climatic drivers over short distances on the various facets of biodiversity. It is globally assumed that the decrease in species richness with increasing elevation follows mainly the decrease in ecosystem productivity, but studies on functional diversity still remain limited. Here, we investigated how resource use and food preferences by both individual ant species and communities foraging in the understory vary with elevation along a complete elevational gradient (200 to 3200m asl). Five bait types reflecting some of the main ecosystem processes in which ants are involved were tested: mutualism (sucrose and melezitose), predation (live termites), and detritivory (crushed insects and chicken feces). The observed monotonic decrease in both species richness and occurrences with elevation increase was accompanied by changes in some of the tested ecosystem processes. Such variations can be explained by resource availability and/or resource limitation: Predation and bird feces removal decreased with increasing elevation possibly reflecting a decline in species able to use these resources, while insect detritivory and nectarivory were most probably driven by resource limitation (or absence of limitation), as their relative use did not change along the gradient. Consequently, resource attractiveness (i.e., food preferences at the species level) appears as an important factor in driving community structuring in ants together with the abiotic environmental conditions.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

10618 - Ecology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GB14-36098G" target="_blank" >GB14-36098G: Center for tropical biology</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2018

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Biotropica

ISSN

0006-3606

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

50

Issue of the periodical within the volume

4

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

8

Pages from-to

641-648

UT code for WoS article

000437264200012

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85042037534