Diversidade da mirmecofauna e sucessão florestal na Amazônia - Acre, Brasil

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Marco Antonio de
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/869
• topic: Floresta Amazônica; Estrutura da vegetação; Riqueza e composição da vegetação de formigas; Regeneração natural; Amazonas Forest; Vegetation structure; Richness and composition of the ant vegetation; Natural regeneration; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA::ECOLOGIA APLICADA

Knowledge on ant diversity in different ecosystems is an important tool for understanding ecological relations, specially in the Amazon where little has been done on the subject. Plant community structure is one of the major factors responsible for the determination and changes in ant species richness and composition. The aims of this study werw: 1) to provide the first list of ant species for the state of Acre and to analyze ant diversity in the surveyed areas. 2) to evaluate the effects of the forest succession process on the ant species richness and composition in an area of the Amazon forest, in the State of Acre, Brasil. The study was conducted in a forest remaining named Reserva Expermental Catuaba. The areas were divided in primary forest (Mata); Secondary forest of approximately 16 years (Capoeira); Secondary forest of approximately 16 years, experimentally cut, burned and cleaned (Regeneração) and an area of farmaland (Matriz), constituted by a mosaic at the edges of the reservation. Two hundred and forty samples per area, using pitfall traps, in a total of 2,400 samples of Formicidae were performed from june, 2001 a through January, 2005. Simultaneously, the vegetation survey was carried out as well as the analyses of 11 variables of the vegetation structure. These were correlated with ant species richness. Changes in floristic and structure of the vegetation and the ant fauna were evaluated during the successional stages in the regeneration areas. A total of 106,018 ant specimens distributed in 8 subfamilies, 57 genera and 276 species were collected. Ant species richness found was 262 in the Mata; 123 in the Capoeira; 167 in the Regeneration and 172 in the Matriz. The shanon-Wiener index (H’) for the Mata (4.29); Capoeira (3.61); Regeneration (3.47) and Matriz (3.06) suggest that the primary forest has the greatest diversity among the areas. From the 276 ant species collected, about 69 (in 35 genera) were affected by the disturbance caused by cutting and burning of the areas. The recomposition of the ant species was observed as the vegetation recovered but never as before the impact, so that generalist ant species were collected in those areas. The variables tree height, tree density, basal area, canopy height, shrub density, complexity and heterogeneity predicted well the richness of the ant fauna. Stem density, girth at breast height, shrub height, culm density and floristic richness did not show significant relation with ant species richness. Tree height was considered the best predicting variable to explain ant species richness. Tree height, girth at breast height and canopy height were the best variables to predict ant fauna richness in the three regeneration areas and in the three “time series”. Spatial distance among the areas did not affect the ant fauna composition. In general, the floristic and faunistic similarity were correlated, showing that the vegetation can affect and explain the composition of the ant fauna in the studied areas.