Hypogaeic and epigaeic ant diversity on borneo: Evaluation of baited sieve buckets as a study method

Abstract

Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the diversity of ground ant communities. However, despite their potential importance for tropical ecosystems, hypogaeically foraging ant species were often neglected or only marginally touched by these studies. This was mainly due to the difficult sampling of these cryptic species. We successfully used palm oil-baited sieve buckets to study ground and especially hypogaeically foraging ant species on Borneo. We suggest the inclusion of sieve buckets into future studies of ground ant communities to obtain a more comprehensive record of the hypogaeic ant fauna than could be sampled with the methods hitherto applied. As expected, the species yield (85 collected species from 32 genera) was lower than in studies employing several and more generalized sampling methods. However, a large proportion of our collected species (48%) had not been collected during a previous study that extensively sampled the same area. Of the collected species, 55% foraged at least partially below the soil surface, 47% of which had not been collected by winkler litter sifting in a previous study in the same area. Furthermore, by employing sieve buckets, we could show different hypogaeic species to be undersampled by other studies using different methods in the same area. Although the oil was accessible to epigaeically as well as hypogaeically foraging species, only 45 species demonstrably fed on the oil. The attractiveness of oil for ant species of different genera is discussed. Since oil was not a generally attractive baiting substance, we tested sieve buckets baited with tuna and cookies. We conclude that sieve buckets baited with tuna and oil represent a quick and easy method well suited to supplement other methods, finally enabling the inclusion of hypogaeic ant species in ground ant diversity studies. © 2003 by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.