Ecosystem engineering in the arboreal realm: heterogeneity of wood-boring beetle cavities and their use by cavity-nesting ants.
Oecologia
; 196(2): 427-439, 2021 Jun.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33970331
ABSTRACT
Wood-boring beetle larvae act as ecosystem engineers by creating stem cavities that are used secondarily as nests by many arboreal ant species. Understanding the heterogeneity and distribution of available cavities and their use by ants is therefore key to understanding arboreal ant community assembly and diversity. Our goals were to quantify the abundance and diversity of beetle-produced cavity resources in a tropical canopy, reveal how ants use these resources, and determine which characteristics of the cavity resource contribute to ant use. We dissected branches from six common tree species in the Brazilian Cerrado savanna, measuring cavity characteristics and identifying the occupants. We sampled 2310 individual cavities, 576 of which were used as nests by 25 arboreal ant species. We found significant differences among tree species in the proportion of stem length bored by beetles, the number of cavities per stem length, average entrance-hole size, and the distribution of cavity volumes. The likelihood that a cavity was occupied was greater for cavities with larger entrance-hole sizes and larger volumes. In particular, there was a strong positive correlation between mean head diameters of ant species and the mean entrance-hole diameter of the cavities occupied by those ant species. Wood-boring beetles contribute to the structuring of the Cerrado ant community by differentially attacking the available tree species. In so doing, the beetles provide a wide range of entrance-hole sizes which ant species partition based on their body size, and large volume cavities that ants appear to prefer.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Ants
/
Coleoptera
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Animals
Country/Region as subject:
America do sul
/
Brasil
Language:
En
Journal:
Oecologia
Year:
2021
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States