Effects of forest disturbance on the structure of ground-foraging ant communities in central Amazonia

This study evaluates biotic responses, using ants as bio-indicators, to relatively recent anthropogenic disturbances to mature forest in central Amazonia. The structure of the ground-foraging ant community was compared in four habitats that represented a gradient of disturbance associated with differences in land use. Ants were collected in undisturbed, mature forest, in an abandoned pasture, in a young regrowth forest (situated in a former pasture area), and in an old regrowth forest (established where mature forest was just cleared and abandoned). More ant species were found in mature and old regrowth forest than in the abandoned pasture. By contrast, ant abundance tended to decrease with forest maturity. Both pasture and young regrowth forest exhibited a distinct ant species composition compared to mature forest, whereas species composition in the old regrowth forest showed greater similarity to that of mature forest. In spite of differences in fallow time between former pasture areas and non-pasture areas, there is evidence that different land-management practices do result in different rates of recovery of the ant forest fauna after land abandonment. In any case, recuperation of the ground-foraging ant fauna appears to be faster than regeneration of the woody-plant community. In this sense, regrowth forests may be valuable for the conservation of ground-foraging ants and perhaps for other components of mature-forest leaf-litter fauna within the context of a fragmented landscape.