Chemical conspicuousness, ant organs, and specificity in myrmecophilous caterpillars partitioning ant-plant systems.

Resource partitioning among sympatric species is crucial for assembling ecological communities, such as caterpillar-ant assemblages in tropical forests. Myrmecophilous caterpillars use behavioral and chemical strategies to coexist with ants, avoiding attacks. While these strategies are well-understood in single pair of interacting species, such as those involving myrmecophiles and ants, their role in complex multitrophic interactions that include several species of plants, herbivores and ants remains unclear.

ATLANTIC ANTS: a data set of ants in Atlantic Forests of South America.

Ants, an ecologically successful and numerically dominant group of animals, play key ecological roles as soil engineers, predators, nutrient recyclers, and regulators of plant growth and reproduction in most terrestrial ecosystems. Further, ants are widely used as bioindicators of the ecological impact of land use. We gathered information of ant species in the Atlantic Forest of South America.

Agricultural matrices affect ground ant assemblage composition inside forest fragments.

The establishment of agricultural matrices generally involves deforestation, which leads to fragmentation of the remaining forest. This fragmentation can affect forest dynamics both positively and negatively. Since most animal species are affected, certain groups can be used to measure the impact of such fragmentation.