Ant community in burned and unburned sites in campos rupestres ecosystem

Abstract

Ground-dwelling ants have shown consistent resilience to Are in savanna environments. We carried out a study to investigate how ant community structure responds to Are in campos rupestres sites. We studied the ant communities' response to Are in two different elevations (800 m above sea level and 1300 m a.s.l.) in southeastern Brazil. Pitfall trap samples were set at three different periods: one, four, and ten months after a fire event. Overall, one hundred and fifteen ant species were collected. At a local scale, ant species richness and composition did not differ between burned and unburned plots in the lower elevation (800 m). At the higher altitude (1300 m) the burned sites presented higher richness and different ant composition in comparison to unburned sites. Moreover, ten months later no difference between the richness of ant species in burned and unburned plots was found at 1300 m, even though the plots showed distinct species composition. These data support the hypothesis that fire represents a structuring disturbance factor for ant assemblages and indicates that the recovering of the campos rupestres vegetation influences ant community structure at higher elevations.