The diversity of ant communities and its connections with other arthropod communities from three temperate forest of Central Mexico

Abstract

Ants have been considered as useful to bioindication due to their ecological characteristics. However, an important characteristic of a bioindicator group, there must be a consistent and repeatable response to an environmental disturbance. On this matter, divergent responses have been reported, even among closely related taxa. The aim of this work was to compare the diversity of ant communities from three temperate forests with different disturbance level and correlate their abundance, species richness and diversity with that found in other arthropod communities in the same forests. The results suggest that the site has an important influence on community ants and their values of richness, abundance and diversity are correlated to communities of spiders, beetles, grasshopers and true bugs, but not in all studied zones. The answers to environmental changes are not only by numerical ratios of abundance, richness or diversity, but also by indirect and causal ecological interactions. Finally the data seems to be indicating that the responds of ants to environmental disturbing are not necessarily reflected on other organism communities, in consequence the role of ants as bioindicator could be misleading