Canopy Ant Assemblage (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Two Vegetation Formations in the Northern Brazilian Pantanal

• Main Authors: Juliane Dambros, Vanessa Vindica França, Jacques Hubert Charles Delabie, Marinez Isaac Marques, Leandro Dênis Battirola
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana 2018-10-01
• Series: Sociobiology
• Subjects: canopy; social insects; canopy fogging; vegetation types
• Online Access: http://periodicos.uefs.br/index.php/sociobiology/article/view/1932

The landscape of the northern Pantanal region is a mosaic of fields and forests, distributed according to topography and hydrology of this floodplain, resulting in a particular pattern of vegetation distribution. Among the forest formations, mixedspecies and monodominant landscape units can be found which are associated with floodable or non-floodable habitats. Our study tested the hypothesis that forest formations with greater tree richness and which are non floodable (cordilheiras) maintain distinct richness and composition in canopy ant assemblages in relation to the seasonally floodable monodominant forests (cambarazais). Sampling was performed in 10 sample areas (five cambarazais and five cordilheiras) by means of canopy insecticide fogging during the dry and high water seasons of the Pantanal’s hydrological cycle. The canopy ant assemblages revealed 105 species belonging to 30 genera and nine subfamilies. Myrmicinae (41 spp.), Formicinae (20 spp.) and Pseudomyrmecinae (17 spp.) predominated. Our results revealed that the composition of canopy ant assemblages varied between cambarazal and cordilheira forests, as well as between the dry and high water periods. Nevertheless, the richness was homogeneous between these forests and in the dry and high water periods. These results show the specificity of each forest, as well as its structure, in maintaining distinct compositions in ant assemblages in canopies in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso.