Litter aiomass and nutrient determinants of ant density, nest size, and growth in a Costa Rican tropical wet forest

Biotropica

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 234-240

  McGlynn, Terrence P ^a   Fawcett, Ryan M ^b   Clark, Deborah A ^c  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI ST LOUIS   (United States)

Author keywords

Ants; Detritus; Ecological stoichiometry; Pheidole; Phosphorus; Pyramica; Solenopsis

Indexed keywords

ANT; BIOMASS; GROWTH RESPONSE; LITTER; NEST; NUTRITIONAL REQUIREMENT; POPULATION DENSITY; STOICHIOMETRY; TROPICAL FOREST;

ANIMALIA; FORMICIDAE; PHEIDOLE; PYRAMICA; SOLENOPSIS;

EID: 61549083961     PISSN: 00063606     EISSN: 17447429     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7429.2008.00465.x     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Andersen, A. N. 1997. Using ants as bioindicators: Multiscale issues in ant community ecology. Cons. Ecol. 1 : 8. http://www.consecol.org/vol1/iss1/ art8/.
2. Andersen, A. N., and J. D. Majer. 2004. Ants show the way Down Under: Invertebrates as bioindicators in land management. Front. Ecol. Environ. 2 : 291 298.
3. Andrewartha, H. G., and L. C. Birch. 1954. The distribution and abundance of animals. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.
4. Behmer, S. T., C. M. Lloyd, D. Raubenheimer, J. Stewart-Clark, J. Knight, R. S. Leighton, F. A. Harper, and J. A. C. Smith. 2005. Metal hyperaccumulation in plants: mechanisms of defense against insect herbivores. Func. Ecol. 19 : 55 66.
5. Bernstein, R. A. 1975. Foraging strategies of ants in response to variable food density. Ecology 56 : 213 219.
6. Byrne, M. M. 1994. Ecology of twig-dwellings ants in a wet lowland tropical forest. Biotropica 26 : 61 72.
7. Clark, D. B., and Clark, D. A. 2000. Landscape-scale variation in forest structure and biomass in a tropical rain forest. For. Ecol. Man. 137 : 185 198.
8. Clémencet, J., and C. Doums. 2007. Habitat-related microgeographic variation of worker size and colony size in the ant Cataglyphis cursor. Oecologia 152 : 211 218.
9. Connell, J. H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199 : 1302 1310.
10. Currie, D. J., G. G. Mittelbach, H. V. Cornell, R. Field, J. Guégan, B. A. Hawkins, D. M. Kaufman, J. T. Kerr, T. Oberdorff, E. O'Brien, and J. R. G. Turner. 2004. Predictions and tests of climate-based hypotheses of broad-scale variation in taxonomic richness. Ecol. Lett. 7 : 1121 1134.
11. Delhaize, E., and P. R. Ryan. 1995. Aluminum toxicity and tolerance in plants. Plant Physiol. 107 : 315 321.
12. Dytham, C. 2003. Choosing and using statistics, 2nd edition. Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts.
13. Elser, J. J., R. W. Sterner, E. Gorokhova, W. F. Fagan, T. A. Markow, J. B. Cotner, J. F. Harrison, S. E. Hobbie, G. M. Odell, and L. W. Weider. 2000. Biological stoichiometry from genes to ecosystems. Ecol. Lett. 3 : 540 550.
14. Fraser, R. H. 1998. Vertebrate species richness at the mesoscale: Relative roles of energy and heterogeneity. Global Ecol. Biogeogr. 7 : 215 220.
15. Frost, P. C., and J. J. Elser. 2002. Growth responses of littoral mayflies to the phosphorus content of their food. Ecol. Lett. 5 : 232 240.
16. Gaston, K. J. 2000. Global patterns in biodiversity. Nature 405 : 220 227.
17. Gotelli, N. J., and A. M. Ellison. 2002. Biogeography at a regional scale: Determinants of ant species density in New England bogs and forests. Ecology 83 : 1604 1609.
18. Hölldobler, B., and E. O. Wilson. 1990. The ants. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
19. Hubbell, S. P. 2001. The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
20. Hutchings, M. J., E. A. John, and D. K. Wijesinghe. 2003. Toward understanding the consequences of soil heterogeneity for plant populations and communities. Ecology 84 : 2322 2334.
21. Jeyasingh, P. D., and L. J. Weider. 2005. Phosphorus availability mediates plasticity in life-history traits and predator-prey interactions in Daphnia. Ecol. Lett. 8 : 1021 1028.
22. Jones, M. J., H. Tuomisto, D. B. Clark, and P. Olivas. 2006. Effects of mesoscale environmental heterogeneity and dispersal limitation on floristic variation in rain forest ferns. J. Ecol. 94 : 181 195.
23. Kaspari, M. 1996. Testing resource-based models of patchiness in four Neotropical litter ant assemblages. Oikos 76 : 43 454.
24. Kaspari, M., S. O'Donnell, and L. Alonso. 2000. Three energy variables predict ant abundance at a geographic scale. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B. 267 : 485 490.
25. Kaspari, M., M. N. Garcia, K. E. Harms, M. Santana, S. J. Wright, and J. B. Yavitt. 2008. Multiple nutrients limit litterfall and decomposition in a tropical forest. Ecol. Lett. 11 : 35 43.
26. MacArthur, R. H. 1969. Patterns of communities in the tropics. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 1 : 19 30.
27. Maraun, M., J. Alphei, P. Beste, M. Bonkowski, R. Buryn, S. Migge, M. Eter, M. Schaefer, and S. Scheu. 2001. Indirect effects of carbon and nutrient amendments on the soil meso- and microfauna of a beechwood. Biol. Fertil. Soils 34 : 222 229.
28. McGlynn, T. P. 2006. Ants on the move: Resource limitation of a litter-nesting ant community in Costa Rica. Biotropica 38 : 419 427.
29. McGlynn, T. P., R. R. Dunn, D. J. Salinas, T. E. Wood, D. Lawrence, and D. A. Clark. 2007. Phosphorus limits tropical rainforest litter fauna. Biotropica 39 : 50 53.
30. Milton, Y., and M. Kaspari. 2007. Bottom-up and top-down regulation of decomposition in a tropical forest. Oecologia 153 : 163 172.
31. Moe, S. J., R. S. Stelzer, M. R. Forman, W.S Daufresne, and T. Yoshida. 2005. Recent advances in ecological stoichiometry: Insights for population and community ecology. Oikos 109 : 29 39.
32. Moore, J. C., E. L. Berlow, D. C. Coleman, P. C. Ruiter, Q. Dong, A. Hastings, N. C. Johnson, K. S. McCann, K. Melville, P. J. Morin, K. Nadelhoffer, A. D. Rosemond, D. M. Post, J. L. Sabo, K. M. Scow, M. J. Vanni, and D. H. Wall. 2004. Detritus, trophic dynamics and biodiversity. Ecol. Lett. 7 : 584 600.
33. Norton, R. A., and V. M. Behan-Pelletier. 1991. Calcium carbonate and calcium oxalate as cuticular hardening agents in oribatid mites (Acari: Oribatida). Can. J. Zool. 69 : 1504 1511.
34. Peeters, C., and F. Ito. 2001. Colony dispersal and the evolution of queen morphology in Hymenoptera. Ann. Rev. Entomol. 46 : 601 630.
35. Porder, S., P. M. Vitousek, O. A. Chadwick, C. P. Chamberlain, and G. E. Hilley. 2007. Uplift, erosion and phosphorus limitation in terrestrial ecosystems. Ecosystems 10 : 158 170.
36. Powers, J. S., K. K. Treseder, and M. T. Lerdau. 2005. Fine roots, arbuscular mycorrhizal hyphae and soil nutrients in four Neotropical rain forests: Patterns across large geographic distances. New Phytol. 165 : 913 921.
37. Reich, P. B. 2005. Global biogeography of plant chemistry: Filling in the blanks. New Phytol. 168 : 263 266.
38. Reichle, D. E., M. H. Shanks, and D. A. Crossley Jr. 1969. Calcium, potassium and sodium content of forest floor arthropods. Ann. Ent. Soc. Am. 62 : 57 62.
39. Ritchie, M. E. 2000. Nitrogen limitation and trophic vs. abiotic influences on insect herbivores in a temperate grassland. Ecology 81 : 1601 1612.
40. Schade, J. D., M. Kyle, S. E. Hobbie, W. F. Fagan, and J. J. Elser. 2003. Stoichiometric tracking of soil nutrients by a desert insect herbivore. Ecol. Lett. 6 : 96 101.
41. Sterner, R. W., and J. J. Elser. 2002. Ecological stoichiometry: The biology of elements from molecules to the biosphere. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
42. Tabak, L. M., and K. E. Gibbs. 1991. Effects of aluminum, calcium and low pH on egg hatching and nymphal survival of Cloeon triangulifer McDunnough (Ephemeroptera: Baetidae). Hydrobiologia 218 : 157 166.
43. Tilman, D. 1994. Competition and biodiversity in spatially structured habitats. Ecology 75 : 2 16.
44. Veldkamp, E., A. Becker, L. Schwendenmann, D. A. Clark, and H. Schulte-Bisping. 2003. Substantial labile carbon stocks and microbial activity in deeply weathered soils below a tropical wet forest. Global Change Biol. 9 : 1171 1184.
45. Vitousek, P. M., and R. L. Sanford. 1986. Nutrient cycling in moist tropical forest. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 17 : 137 167.
46. Wassen, M. J., H. O. Venterink, E. D. Lapshina, and F. Tanneberger. 2005. Endangered plants persist under phosphorus limitation. Nature 437 : 547 550.
47. Whittaker, R. J. 2000. Scale, succession and complexity in island biogeography: Are we asking the right questions? Global Ecol. Biogeography 9 : 75 85.
48. Wilson, E. O. 1971. The insect societies. Belknap, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
49. Wilson, E. O. 2005. Oribatid mite predation by small ants of the genus Pheidole. Ins. Soc. 52 : 263 265.
50. Wood, T. E., D. Lawrence, and D. A. Clark. 2005. Variation in leaf litter nutrients of a Costa Rican rain forest is related to precipitation. Biogeochemistry 73 : 417 437.
51. Wood, T. E., D. Lawrence, and D. A. Clark. 2006. Determinants of leaf litter nutrient cycling in a tropical rain forest: Fertility versus topography. Ecosystems 9 : 700 710.