Vegetation structure of plantain-based agrosystems determines numerical dominance in community of ground-dwelling ants

Dassou Gbèblonoudo Anicet, Tixier Philippe, Depigny Sylvain, Carval Dominique. 2017. Vegetation structure of plantain-based agrosystems determines numerical dominance in community of ground-dwelling ants. PeerJ, 5:e3917, 13 p.

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3917

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Quartile : Q2, Sujet : MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES

Résumé : In tropics, ants can represent an important part of animal biomass and are known to be involved in ecosystem services, such as pest regulation. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the structuring of local ant communities is therefore important in agroecology. In the humid tropics of Africa, plantains are cropped in association with many other annual and perennial crops. Such agrosystems differ greatly in vegetation diversity and structure and are well-suited for studying how habitat-related factors affect the ant community. We analysed abundance data for the six numerically dominant ant taxa in 500 subplots located in 20 diversified, plantain-based fields. We found that the density of crops with foliage at intermediate and high canopy strata determined the numerical dominance of species. We found no relationship between the numerical dominance of each ant taxon with the crop diversity. Our results indicate that the manipulation of the densities of crops with leaves in the intermediate and high strata may help maintain the coexistence of ant species by providing different habitat patches. Further research in such agrosystems should be performed to assess if the effect of vegetation structure on ant abundance could result in efficient pest regulation.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : agroécologie, Formicidae, structure de la population, Musa (plantains), végétation

Mots-clés géographiques Agrovoc : Cameroun

Mots-clés libres : Cameroon, Dominant, Subdominant, Subordinate, Ants, Vegetation strata, Baits

Classification Agris : L20 - Écologie animale
F08 - Systèmes et modes de culture
F40 - Écologie végétale

Champ stratégique Cirad : Axe 1 (2014-2018) - Agriculture écologiquement intensive

Agences de financement européennes : European Commission

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