Patterns of co-occurrence of species of soil ants in reforestation of small-scale Atlantic Forest
environmental filters, competition, restoration, Atlantic forest
The use of null models in analyzes of co-occurrence patterns has become a viable alternative
to study the rules that govern the assembly of communities. Local communities are formed
from the regional species pool under the influence of several factors. Our study investigated
some factors that may influence the formation of local ground-dwelling ant community using
presence/absence matrices obtained from a planted forest in southeastern Brazil. We analyzed
occurrence patterns of 52 ant species according to ant guilds, habitat types, sampling time,
and randomization algorithms. The random pattern of species distribution predominated in the
community, making up 70% of the results, followed by segregation, with 21.7%, and
aggregation pattern, with 8.3% of the results. Non-random co-occurrence patterns were more
frequent for omnivorous ants, heterogeneous habitats, dry period, and fixed-fixed
randomization algorithm. The frequencies of aggregation and segregation were almost the
same between ant guilds, with segregation patterns prevailing in all cases. Heterogeneous
habitat matrices showed much more segregation than aggregation of species pairs, whereas
the results for the homogeneous habitat matrices were dependent upon tree species. Regarding
the sampling time, we found only segregation in the rainy, whereas in dry period, aggregation
and segregation patterns occurred with small differences in frequencies. Aggregation species
co-occurrence patterns of ants were never found in fixed-fixed algorithm. Our results showed
the importance of analyzing several factors when using species co-occurrence patterns to
understand the formation of local communities. Although ant community demonstrates in
most cases a random structure in the distribution of species pairs, even working in a small
spatial scale, we found evidence in favor of the tree specialization hypothesis, suggesting the
importance of using different tree species in restoration projects to recover the diversity of ant
species.