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The effects of fire on ant trophic assemblage and sex allocation

Ecology and evolution, 2014-01, Vol.4 (1), p.35-49 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

2013 The Authors. published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ;2014 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ;2014. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. ;2013 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 2014 ;ISSN: 2045-7758 ;EISSN: 2045-7758 ;DOI: 10.1002/ece3.714 ;PMID: 24455159

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  • Title:
    The effects of fire on ant trophic assemblage and sex allocation
  • Author: Caut, Stephane ; Jowers, Michael J. ; Arnan, Xavier ; Pearce‐Duvet, Jessica ; Rodrigo, Anselm ; Cerda, Xim ; Boulay, Raphaël R.
  • Subjects: Animal species ; Ant assemblage ; Aphaenogaster ; Aphaenogaster gibbosa ; Arthropoda ; Arthropods ; Community structure ; Diet ; Ecosystem dynamics ; Ecosystems ; Energy flow ; Environmental changes ; Females ; Food chains ; Food plants ; Food resources ; Food webs ; Formicidae ; Herbivores ; Laboratories ; Males ; Nests ; Original Research ; Proteins ; reproductive output ; Resource allocation ; Resource utilization ; Sex ; sex ratio ; Species ; stable isotopes ; Studies ; Trophic levels ; wildfire ; Workers (insect caste)
  • Is Part Of: Ecology and evolution, 2014-01, Vol.4 (1), p.35-49
  • Description: Fire plays a key role in ecosystem dynamics worldwide, altering energy flows and species community structure and composition. However, the functional mechanisms underlying these effects are not well understood. Many ground‐dwelling animal species can shelter themselves from exposure to heat and therefore rarely suffer direct mortality. However, fire‐induced alterations to the environment may change a species' relative trophic level within a food web and its mode of foraging. We assessed how fire could affect ant resource utilization at different scales in a Mediterranean forest. First, we conducted isotopic analyses on entire ant species assemblages and their potential food resources, which included plants and other arthropods, in burned and unburned plots 1 year postfire. Second, we measured the production of males and females by nests of a fire‐resilient species, Aphaenogaster gibbosa, and analyzed the differences in isotopic values among workers, males, and females to test whether fire constrained resource allocation. We found that, in spite of major modifications in biotic and abiotic conditions, fire had little impact on the relative trophic position of ant species. The studied assemblage was composed of species with a wide array of diets. They ranged from being mostly herbivorous to completely omnivorous, and a given species' trophic level was the same in burned and unburned plots. In A. gibbosa nests, sexuals had greater δ15N values than workers in both burned and unburned plots, which suggests that the former had a more protein‐rich diet than the latter. Fire also appeared to have a major effect on A. gibbosa sex allocation: The proportion of nests that produced male brood was greater on burned zones, as was the mean number of males produced per nest with the same reproductive investment. Our results show that generalist ants with relatively broad diets maintained a constant trophic position, even following a major disturbance like fire. However, the dramatically reduced production of females on burned zones compared to unburned zones 1 year postfire may result in considerably reduced recruitment of new colonies in the mid to long term, which could yield genetic bottlenecks and founder effects. Our study paves the way for future functional analyses of fire‐induced modifications in ant populations and communities. (A) Number of sexuals in the complete nests excavated in burned and unburned zones; and (B) Effect of fire on the numerical sex ratio (nSRT) and investment sex ratio (iSRT) as well as on the percentage of reproductive biomass (%RB), male biomass (%MB), and female biomass (%FB) of excavated nests.
  • Publisher: England: John Wiley & Sons, Inc
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 2045-7758
    EISSN: 2045-7758
    DOI: 10.1002/ece3.714
    PMID: 24455159
  • Source: Geneva Foundation Free Medical Journals at publisher websites
    AUTh Library subscriptions: ProQuest Central
    PubMed Central
    Wiley Online Library Open Access
    ROAD: Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources
    DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
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