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Distinctive life traits and distribution along environmental gradients of dominant and subordinate Mediterranean ant species

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

For most animal and plant species, life traits strongly affect their species-specific role, function or position within ecological communities. Previous studies on ant communities have mostly focused on the role of dominant species and the outcome of interspecific interactions. However, life traits of ant species have seldom been considered within a community framework. This study (1) analyses life traits related to ecological and behavioural characteristics of dominant and subordinate ant species from 13 sites distributed throughout the Iberian Peninsula, (2) determines how similar the ant species are within each of the two levels of the dominance hierarchy, and (3) establishes the distribution patterns of these different groups of species along environmental gradients. Our results showed that the differences between dominants and subordinates fall into two main categories: resource exploitation and thermal tolerance. Dominant species have more populated colonies and defend food resources more fiercely than subordinates, but they display low tolerance to high temperatures. We have identified different assemblages of species included within each of these two levels in the dominance hierarchy. The distribution of these assemblages varied along the environmental gradient, shifting from dominant Dolichoderinae and cryptic species in moist areas, to dominant Myrmicinae and hot climate specialists mainly in open and hot sites. We have been able to identify a set of life traits of the most common Iberian ant species that has enabled us to characterise groups of dominant and subordinate species. Although certain common features within the groups of both dominants and subordinates always emerge, other different features allow for differentiating subgroups within each of these groups. These different traits allow the different subgroups coping with particular conditions across environmental gradients.

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Acknowledgments

This study was partly funded by the Spanish “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” (project Consolider MONTES, CSD 2008-00040 to J.R. and project CGL2009-09690/BOS to X.C.). We are grateful to Rocío Requerey, Alicia Prieto and Olga Guerrero for bibliographic assistance, to Elena Angulo for help with the (sometimes unfruitful) statistics, to Alain Lenoir and Raphaël Boulay for very helpful comments during coffee (or beer) breaks. Thanks are also due to our colleagues and friends Anna Alsina, Jordi Bosch, Raphaël Boulay, Valentín Cavia, Soledad Carpintero, Sebastià Cros, Xavier Espadaler, Paqui Ruano and Alberto Tinaut, for providing us with data about the ant traits. All experiments comply with current Spanish laws.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unitat d’Ecologia i CREAF, Facultat de Biociències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain

    Xavier Arnan & Javier Retana

  2. Estación Biológica de Doñana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Avda. Américo Vespucio, 41092, Sevilla, Spain

    Xim Cerdá

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  1. Xavier Arnan
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  2. Xim Cerdá
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Correspondence to Xavier Arnan.

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Communicated by Phil Lester.

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Arnan, X., Cerdá, X. & Retana, J. Distinctive life traits and distribution along environmental gradients of dominant and subordinate Mediterranean ant species. Oecologia 170, 489–500 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2315-y

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