Studies in tropical rainforests
indicate that often single ant species cause the majority of resource
consumption / Large differences between day and night
Date: February 1, 2016
Source: Johannes Gutenberg
Universitaet Mainz
Ants and humans represent
approximately the same amount of biomass on our planet. Together with other
social insects, ants make up a third of the entire animal biomass in the
tropics and hence have a major effect on their ecosystems. Researchers at
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) investigated the role of different
ant species in various ecosystem processes in tropical rain forests. They
discovered that the dominant role is often played by only a few or even a
single ant species when it comes to consuming food resources, something that
can make an ecosystem vulnerable. Researchers working with Dr. Florian Menzel
of the JGU Institute of Zoology have identified ant species in the forests of
Borneo that are extremely efficient and exploit the major proportion of the
food resources available. This is the first time that biologists quantified
resource consumption by ants in the field and differentiated between diurnal
and nocturnal ant communities.
The stability of an ecosystem
depends on various factors, such as whether and how fast a system can return to
its original state after disturbance. The capacity of an ecosystem to cope with
the loss of species also contributes to its stability. How ecosystem stability
is affected by anthropogenic loss of biodiversity has been extensively studied
in the past years. Generally, a high biodiversity leads to a high stability of
the ecosystem. However, how tight this relation is and which other factors
influence it often remains unknown.
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