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Within-tree distribution of nest sites and foraging areas of ants on canopy trees in a tropical rainforest in Borneo

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Population Ecology

Abstract

It has been argued that canopy trees in tropical rainforests harbor species-rich ant assemblages; however, how ants partition the space on trees has not been adequately elucidated. Therefore, we investigated within-tree distributions of nest sites and foraging areas of individual ant colonies on canopy trees in a tropical lowland rainforest in Southeast Asia. The species diversity and colony abundance of ants were both significantly greater in crowns than on trunks. The concentration of ant species and colonies in the tree crown seemed to be associated with greater variation in nest cavity type in the crown, compared to the trunk. For ants nesting on canopy trees, the numbers of colonies and species were both higher for ants foraging only during the daytime than for those foraging at night. Similarly, for ants foraging on canopy trees, both values were higher for ants foraging only during the daytime than for those foraging at night. For most ant colonies nesting on canopy trees, foraging areas were limited to nearby nests and within the same type of microhabitat (within-tree position). All ants foraging on canopy trees in the daytime nested on canopy trees, whereas some ants foraging on the canopy trees at night nested on the ground. These results suggest that spatial partitioning by ant assemblages on canopy trees in tropical rainforests is affected by microenvironmental heterogeneity generated by three-dimensional structures (e.g., trees, epiphytes, lianas, and aerial soils) in the crowns of canopy trees. Furthermore, ant diversity appears to be enriched by both temporal (diel) and fine-scale spatial partitioning of foraging activity.

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Acknowledgments

We are obliged to Forest Department of Sarawak, Malaysia for their approval for our research plan. We thank Lucy Chong, Het Kaliang, and the other staff of Forest Research Center for giving full facilities to our field census, and Tohru Nakashizuka for supporting our research. We also thank Katsuyuki Eguchi and Shingo Hosoishi, who identified Pheidole and Crematogaster, respectively. This study was financially supported by Grant-in-Aids (no. 17405006 to T. I.) and RIHN Research Project 2-2 from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Hiroshi O. Tanaka & Takao Itioka

  2. Faculty of Science, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan

    Seiki Yamane

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  1. Hiroshi O. Tanaka
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  2. Seiki Yamane
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  3. Takao Itioka
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Correspondence to Hiroshi O. Tanaka.

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Tanaka, H.O., Yamane, S. & Itioka, T. Within-tree distribution of nest sites and foraging areas of ants on canopy trees in a tropical rainforest in Borneo. Popul Ecol 52, 147–157 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-009-0172-2

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