Drove roads: keystone structures that promote ant diversity in Mediterranean forest landscapes
Summary (1 min read)
1. Introduction 38 39
- Drove roads are at least 51 several centuries old, and may have originally been based on the migratory 52 routes of wild ungulates (Manzano and Casas, 2010) .
- Because of their 53 enormous area, long-term persistence, impact on the landscape structure and 54 capacity to host herbivore migrations, drove roads can have played a major 55 ecological role in the Mediterranean Basin.
- Their influence on 59 populations and communities may thus disappear before they are identified and 60.
studied. 61
- The few published ecological studies of drove roads have focused on their 63 effects on plant communities.
- More recently, the effects of drove roads on landscape patterns, 68 species composition and functional diversity of plant communities have been 69 measured (Azcárate et al, 2012) , showing that drove roads are a source of 70 spatial heterogeneity and a reservoir for many plant species in non-or 71 moderately-grazed habitats.
- Examples of keystone structures at different spatial 84 scales are tree cavities in forests (for insects, birds and mammals), trees in 85 African savannas (for arboreal rodents, ungulates, raptors and other species 86 groups) and temporary wetlands in agricultural fields (for carabid beetles) (Tews 5 et al., 2004; Remm and Lohmus, 2011) .
- Drove roads might then function 90 as keystone structures by favouring rich groups of terrestrial species with 91 relevant roles on ecosystem functioning, such as ants.
2.3. Distributional status of the ant species 159 160
- To take into account that these maps could be biased by several factors 164 (geographic distribution of myrmecologists, detectability of the different 165 species), and could underestimate the distribution range of many species, the authors 166 have considered that those species present in more than 25% of the Iberian 167 1ºx1º cells are widespread species.
- The rest of species were considered 168 uncommon.
2.4. Functional traits and functional diversity 171 172
- The aspect of the curves does not suggest increases in richness at the location 354 scale on the sole basis of the inclusion of a drove road.
- The composition of the 355 drove road communities also showed no substantial differences from the 356 cropland and rangeland matrices.
- It is important to note that although the study 357 locations are still managed extensively, they are increasingly being replaced by 358 more common intensive schemes, and also that ants are sensitive to 359 agricultural and grazing intensification (Wilson et al., 1999; Andersen et al., 360 2002; Philpott and Armbrecht, 2006) .
- Thus, drove roads within these intensively 361 managed open landscapes may indeed have higher richness values.
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Cites background from "Drove roads: keystone structures th..."
...The selection of these traits was based on important characteristics recognised in ant ecology (Azcárate et al. 2013)....
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References
2,762 citations
"Drove roads: keystone structures th..." refers result in this paper
...This result is compatible with the sampling effect hypothesis (SEH) (Tilman et al., 1997), which predicts that successive additive random draws from a regional species pool lead to an increase in trait states....
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2,735 citations
"Drove roads: keystone structures th..." refers methods in this paper
...Functional diversity was thenmeasured with the FDis index, the mean distance in a multidimensional trait space of individual species from the centroid of all species in an assemblage (LaLiberté and Legendre, 2010)....
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2,668 citations
"Drove roads: keystone structures th..." refers background or result in this paper
...…at different spatial scales are tree cavities in forests (for insects, birds and mammals), trees in African savannas (for arboreal rodents, ungulates, raptors and other species groups) and temporary wetlands in agricultural fields (for carabid beetles) (Tews et al., 2004; Remm and Lohmus, 2011)....
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...Following Tews et al. (2004), the keystone structure characteristic was recognized if an abrupt increase in the pattern of species accumulation occurred when the curve entered a new habitat type....
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...Firstly, drove roads are distinct spatial structures within larger and more homogeneous matrices (Azcárate et al., 2012), what coincides with the physical appearance described by Tews et al. (2004) for keystone structures....
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...It has been argued that each animal species group depends on a specific structural aspect of the vegetation whose presence or quality can be detected at a certain spatial scale (Tews et al., 2004)....
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...If drove roads crossing forest environments provide resources or nesting sites to ants as a species group, then they are good candidates to be considered as keystone structures (Tews et al., 2004)....
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1,593 citations
"Drove roads: keystone structures th..." refers background in this paper
...The ideal index of functional diversity should be based on functional traits that correlate well with ecosystem function (Cadotte et al., 2011)....
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1,244 citations
"Drove roads: keystone structures th..." refers background in this paper
...We surmise that ant assemblages in adjacent matrices are affected by edge effects, although on the basis of our datawe cannot rule which specific mechanisms are involved (Ries et al., 2004)....
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