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Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants

Habitat complexity is a major determinant of structure and diversity of ant assemblages. Following the size-grain hypothesis, smaller ant species are likely to be advantaged in more complex habitats compared to larger species. Habitat complexity can act as an environmental filter based on species si...

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Autores principales: Ossola, Alessandro, Nash, Michael A., Christie, Fiona J., Hahs, Amy K., Livesley, Stephen J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4627909/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26528416
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1356
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author Ossola, Alessandro
Nash, Michael A.
Christie, Fiona J.
Hahs, Amy K.
Livesley, Stephen J.
author_facet Ossola, Alessandro
Nash, Michael A.
Christie, Fiona J.
Hahs, Amy K.
Livesley, Stephen J.
author_sort Ossola, Alessandro
collection PubMed
description Habitat complexity is a major determinant of structure and diversity of ant assemblages. Following the size-grain hypothesis, smaller ant species are likely to be advantaged in more complex habitats compared to larger species. Habitat complexity can act as an environmental filter based on species size and morphological traits, therefore affecting the overall structure and diversity of ant assemblages. In natural and semi-natural ecosystems, habitat complexity is principally regulated by ecological successions or disturbance such as fire and grazing. Urban ecosystems provide an opportunity to test relationships between habitat, ant assemblage structure and ant traits using novel combinations of habitat complexity generated and sustained by human management. We sampled ant assemblages in low-complexity and high-complexity parks, and high-complexity woodland remnants, hypothesizing that (i) ant abundance and species richness would be higher in high-complexity urban habitats, (ii) ant assemblages would differ between low- and high-complexity habitats and (iii) ants living in high-complexity habitats would be smaller than those living in low-complexity habitats. Contrary to our hypothesis, ant species richness was higher in low-complexity habitats compared to high-complexity habitats. Overall, ant assemblages were significantly different among the habitat complexity types investigated, although ant size and morphology remained the same. Habitat complexity appears to affect the structure of ant assemblages in urban ecosystems as previously observed in natural and semi-natural ecosystems. However, the habitat complexity filter does not seem to be linked to ant morphological traits related to body size.
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spelling pubmed-46279092015-11-02 Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants Ossola, Alessandro Nash, Michael A. Christie, Fiona J. Hahs, Amy K. Livesley, Stephen J. PeerJ Biodiversity Habitat complexity is a major determinant of structure and diversity of ant assemblages. Following the size-grain hypothesis, smaller ant species are likely to be advantaged in more complex habitats compared to larger species. Habitat complexity can act as an environmental filter based on species size and morphological traits, therefore affecting the overall structure and diversity of ant assemblages. In natural and semi-natural ecosystems, habitat complexity is principally regulated by ecological successions or disturbance such as fire and grazing. Urban ecosystems provide an opportunity to test relationships between habitat, ant assemblage structure and ant traits using novel combinations of habitat complexity generated and sustained by human management. We sampled ant assemblages in low-complexity and high-complexity parks, and high-complexity woodland remnants, hypothesizing that (i) ant abundance and species richness would be higher in high-complexity urban habitats, (ii) ant assemblages would differ between low- and high-complexity habitats and (iii) ants living in high-complexity habitats would be smaller than those living in low-complexity habitats. Contrary to our hypothesis, ant species richness was higher in low-complexity habitats compared to high-complexity habitats. Overall, ant assemblages were significantly different among the habitat complexity types investigated, although ant size and morphology remained the same. Habitat complexity appears to affect the structure of ant assemblages in urban ecosystems as previously observed in natural and semi-natural ecosystems. However, the habitat complexity filter does not seem to be linked to ant morphological traits related to body size. PeerJ Inc. 2015-10-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4627909/ /pubmed/26528416 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1356 Text en © 2015 Ossola et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Ossola, Alessandro
Nash, Michael A.
Christie, Fiona J.
Hahs, Amy K.
Livesley, Stephen J.
Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
title Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
title_full Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
title_fullStr Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
title_full_unstemmed Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
title_short Urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
title_sort urban habitat complexity affects species richness but not environmental filtering of morphologically-diverse ants
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4627909/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26528416
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1356
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