Riparian reserves within oil palm plantations conserve logged forest leaf litter ant communities and maintain associated scavenging rates

1. The expansion of oil palm plantations at the expense of tropical forests is causing declines in many species and altering ecosystem functions. Maintaining forest‐dependent species and processes in these landscapes may therefore limit the negative impacts of this economically important industry. Protecting riparian vegetation may be one such opportunity; forest buffer strips are commonly protected for hydrological reasons, but can also conserve functionally important taxa and the processes they support. 2. We surveyed leaf litter ant communities within oil palm‐dominated landscapes in Sabah, Malaysia, using protein baits. As the scavenging activity of ants influences important ecological characteristics such as nutrient cycling and soil structure, we quantified species‐specific rates of bait removal to examine how this process may change across land uses and establish which changes in community structure underlie observed shifts in activity. 3. Riparian reserves had similar ant species richness, community composition and scavenging rates to nearby continuous logged forest. Reserve width and vegetation structure did not affect ant species richness significantly. However, the number of foraging individuals decreased with increasing reserve width, and scavenging rate increased with vegetation complexity. 4. Oil palm ant communities were characterized by significantly lower species richness than logged forest and riparian reserves and also by altered community composition and reduced scavenging rates. 5. Reduced scavenging activity in oil palm was not explained by a reduction in ant species richness, nor by replacement of forest ant species by those with lower per species scavenging rates. There was also no significant effect of land use on the scavenging activity of the forest species that persisted in oil palm. Rather, changes in scavenging activity were best explained by a reduction in the mean rate of bait removal per individual ant across all species in the community. 6. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that riparian reserves are comparable to areas of logged forest in terms of ant community composition and ant‐mediated scavenging. Hence, in addition to protecting large continuous areas of primary and logged forest, maintaining riparian reserves is a successful strategy for conserving leaf litter ants and their scavenging activities in tropical agricultural landscapes.