Abstract

CABRERA-CORDOBA, Sandra Patricia; GUTIERREZ-TORRES, Juan David  and  RESTREPO-MANRIQUE, Ricardo. Effects of environmental variables on the composition of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Amazonian foothills forest. Iteckne [online]. 2021, vol.18, n.1, pp.57-70.  Epub Nov 09, 2021. ISSN 1692-1798.

Abiotic factors can negatively or positively affect the structure of communities; studying these factors is important to identify the causes that structure ant communities. Taking into account this situation and that in the Amazon foothills region, particularly the Putumayo department, few studies have been carried out and there is insufficient knowledge about the ecology of many species, this research aimed to evaluate the effect of environmental variables on the assembly of ants, evaluating the hypothesis that the assembly of forest and grassland ants reflect changes in environmental variables (ambient temperature, soil temperature and relative humidity). In the municipality of Orito, in a secondary forest of the Amazonian foothills and its grassland matrix, a 100-meter transect was traced, locating 10 stations 10 meters apart, in these ants were sampled with pitfall traps, corner baits (arboreal, epigeal and hypogeal), litter extraction and manual capture. With the averages of the environmental variables in each station and the diversity and richness data per month of sampling, a Poisson regression analysis was performed and with the data of the morphospecies and the averages of the measured variables the principal component analysis was carried out. The results indicated that the ant assemblages did not reflect the changes in the variables and only some species responded to these patterns. Therefore, to understand the dynamics of the functioning of the ecosystems of the Amazon foothills, it is necessary to study the biology of each species. However, it was determined that the studied habitats share generalist species and contain exclusive species, which contribute to the diversity of ants in the Amazonian foothills, therefore the sites must be conserved.

Keywords : Ambient temperature; soil temperature; relative humidity; forest fragment; grassland matrix.

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