Spatial Distribution of Dominant Arboreal Ants in a Malagasy Coastal Rainforest Gaps and Presence of an Invasive Species 英文参考文献.docVIP

SpatialDistributionofDominantArborealAntsina MalagasyCoastalRainforest:GapsandPresenceofan InvasiveSpecies AlainDejean1*,BrianL.Fisher2,BrunoCorbara3,RaymondRarevohitra4,RichardRandrianaivo5, BalsamaRajemison5,MauriceLeponce6 1E′cologie des Fore?ts de Guyane, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unite′ Mixte de Recherche 8172, Campus agronomique, BP 709, Kourou, France, 2Department of Entomology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California, United States of America, 3Laboratoire Microorganismes Ge′nome et Environnement,CentreNationaldelaRechercheScientifique,Unite′ MixtedeRecherche6023,Universite′ BlaisePascal,Aubie`re,France,4De′partementdeRecherches Forestie`resetPiscicoles,BP904,Antananarivo,Madagascar,5ParcBotaniqueetZoologiquedeTsimbazaza,BP4096,Antananarivo,Madagascar,6BiologicalEvaluation Section,RoyalBelgianInstituteofNaturalSciences,Brussels,Belgium Abstract Weconductedasurveyalongthreebelttransectslocatedatincreasingdistancesfromthecoasttodeterminewhethera non-randomarborealantassemblage,suchasanantmosaic,existsintherainforestontheMasoalaPeninsula,Madagascar. Inmosttropicalrainforests,verypopulouscoloniesofterritoriallydominantarborealantspeciesdefendabsoluteterritories distributedinamosaicpattern.Amongthe29antspeciesrecorded,onlyninehadcolonieslargeenoughtobeconsidered potentially territorially dominant; the remaining species had smaller colonies and were considered non-dominant. Nevertheless, the null-model analyses used to examine the spatial structure of their assemblages did not reveal the existenceofanantmosaic.Inland,upto44%ofthetreesweredevoidofdominantarborealants,somethingnotreported in other studies. While two Crematogaster species were not associated with one another, Brachymyrmex cordemoyi was positivelyassociatedwithTechnomyrmexalbipes,whichisconsideredaninvasivespecies—anon-indigenousspeciesthat has an adverse ecological effect on the habitats it invades. The latter two species and Crematogaster ranavalonae w