Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
Gibb, Heloise; Sanders, Nathan J.; Dunn, Robert R.; Watson, Simon; Photakis, Manoli; Abril, Silvia; Andersen, Alan N.; Angulo, Elena; Armbrecht, Inge; Arnan, Xavier; Baccaro, Fabricio B.; Bishop, Tom R.; Boulay, Raphael; Castracani, Cristina; Del Toro, Israel; Delsinne, Thibaut; Diaz, Mireia; Donoso, David A.; Enríquez, Martha L.; Fayle, Tom M.; Feener Jr., Donald H.; Fitzpatrick, Matthew C.; Gómez, Crisanto; Grasso, Donato A.; Groc, Sarah; Heterick, Brain; Hoffmann, Benjamin D.; Lach, Lori; Lattke, John; Leponce, Maurice; Lessard, Jean-Philippe; Longino, John; Lucky, Andrea; Majer, Jonathan; Menke, Sean B.; Mezger, Dirk; Mori, Alessandra; Munyai, Thinandavha Caswell; Paknia, Omid; Pearce-Duvet, Jessica; Pfeiffer, Martin; Philpott, Stacy M.; De Souza, Jorge L.P.; Tista, Melanie; Vasconcelos, Heraldo L.; Vonshak, Merav; Parr, Catherine Lucy
Date:
2015-06
Abstract:
Many studies have focussed on the impacts of climate change on biological assemblages, yet
little is known about how climate interacts with other major anthropogenic influences on
biodiversity, such as habitat disturbance. Using a unique global database of 1128 local ant
assemblages, we examined whether climate mediates the effects of habitat disturbance on
assemblage structure at a global scale. Species richness and evenness were associated
positively with temperature, and negatively with disturbance. However, the interaction
among temperature, precipitation and disturbance shaped species richness and evenness. The
effect was manifested through a failure of species richness to increase substantially with
temperature in transformed habitats at low precipitation. At low precipitation levels,
evenness increased with temperature in undisturbed sites, peaked at mid temperatures in
disturbed sites and remained low in transformed sites. In warmer climates with lower
rainfall, the effects of increasing disturbance on species richness and evenness were akin to decreases in temperature of up to 9 °C. Anthropogenic disturbance and ongoing climate
change may interact in complicated ways to shape the structure of assemblages, with hot, arid
environments likely to be at greatest risk.