Title

Myrmecochorous plants and their ant seed dispersers through successional stages in temperate cove forests

Creators

Robert Warren, State University of New York College at Buffalo - Buffalo State CollegeFollow
Mary Schultz, University of North Carolina at Asheville
James Costa, Highlands Biological Station
Beverly Collins, Western Carolina University
Mark Bradford, Yale University

Files

Description

Anthropogenic disturbance can decrease woodland diversity in the species-rich herbaceous layer of eastern deciduous forests, and ant-dispersed (myrmecochorous) plants may be particularly affected due to their limited ability to re-colonize secondary forests. Consequently, we predicted that myrmecochorous plants and their keystone seed-dispersing ants would increase with time since last disturbance, as reflected by young, middle or mature forest successional stage. Specifically, we hypothesized that myrmecochore abundance and richness would be relatively lowest in the youngest forests, moderate in middle-aged forests and highest in mature forests. We also hypothesized that experimentally introducing ant bait in a regular pattern, as might be expected from intact species-rich myrmecochore communities, would elicit greater ant foraging interest than intermittent baiting, as might be expected in recently disturbed depauperate myrmecochore communities. We found the highest myrmecochore plant abundance in mature forests, but we found the same for herbaceous plants overall. Moreover, regular and intermittent bait offerings elicited similar overall ant responses. The observational results suggested that myrmecochorous plants respond to forest successional stage as do other woodland plants, and our experimental results suggest that disrupted seed delivery by myrmecochores did not affect Aphaenogaster abundance or foraging behavior. As such, the myrmecochore communities studied here appeared as resilient as other woodland herbs, and seed-dispersing ants did not appear dependent on myrmecochore plant communities. Indeed, given the relatively high myrmecochore richness and abundance across our study sites, forest type (e.g., rich cove forest) might better predict myrmecochore success than successional stage.

Publication Date

2022

Document Type

Book

Publisher

Ecological Entomology

Keywords

Aphaenogaster picea, cove forest, eastern deciduous forest, invertebrate behavior, mesic forest

Disciplines

Biology

Department

Department of Biology

Comments

Data sets

Recommended Citation

Warren, Robert; Schultz, Mary; Costa, James; Collins, Beverly; and Bradford, Mark, "Myrmecochorous plants and their ant seed dispersers through successional stages in temperate cove forests" (2022). Biology Faculty Datasets. 12.
https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/biology_data/12