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Ant diversity and bio-indicators in land management of lac insect agroecosystem in Southwestern China

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Abstract

The segregation of land-use intensity signifies an important change in land use in lac insect agroecosystem of Southwestern China. Farming conversions have led to a highly diversified landscape, with a mosaic made up of patches of land with different succession, from cultivated lands to closed forest. Our aim here is to characterize ant assemblages within this mosaic and identify key ant community metrics and species that can be used for bioindication. The habitats supported different level of ant species richness and abundance. For ants captured by pitfall trapping, the mean plot species richness in lac plantation was significantly higher than that in dry land (deforestation land-use). For ants captured by sweep netting and foliage shaking, there was significant difference among lac plantation, dry land and secondary forest occurring from afforestation of lac plantations, with lac plantation having greatest species richness. Ant species composition was different among the three land-use habitats. Seven of the fifteen most common species had statistically different abundances or occurrence within the three land-uses. Thirteen species had statistically significant different distributions among land-use habitats (among them three species were captured by sweep netting and foliage shaking). Ten species had statistically significant habitat associations determined by IndVal analysis. Among these ten species, five ant species were associated with secondary forest, two with lac plantation, and three with dry land. Lac plantation integrated with lac-production and farming is clearly an important land-use protecting ant diversity, and thus having great conservation potential. The use of ants as bio-indicators is a promising method for determining ecological responses to human land use in China.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank lac producers from the Lüchun County for giving permission to work on their farms, Professor XU Zhenghui for help identifying the specimens, as well as Alan Andersen, Ben Hoffmann and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This research was partially supported with a grant from the Chinese Forestry Academy Science Foundation (riricaf200801z).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Resources Insects of Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF), Bailongsi, Kunming, Yunnan Province, 650224, People’s Republic of China

    You-qing Chen

  2. Faculty of Forestry, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, 650224, People’s Republic of China

    Qiao Li, Yan-lin Chen, Zhi-Xing Lu & Xing-yin Zhou

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  1. You-qing Chen
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  2. Qiao Li
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Correspondence to You-qing Chen.

Appendix

Appendix

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Table 3 Abundance and records of ant species by pitfall trapping/sweep netting and foliage shaking across habitat type
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Chen, Yq., Li, Q., Chen, Yl. et al. Ant diversity and bio-indicators in land management of lac insect agroecosystem in Southwestern China. Biodivers Conserv 20, 3017–3038 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-011-0097-x

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