Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure

Many studies have focused on the impacts of climate change on biological assemblages, yet little is known about how climate interacts with other major anthropogenic influences on biodiversity, such as habitat disturbance. Using a unique global database of 1128 local ant assemblages, we examined whet...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gibb, H., Sanders, N., Dunn, Robert, Watson, S., Photakis, M., Abril, S., Andersen, A., Angulo, E., Armbrecht, E., Aman, X., Baccaro, F.B., Bishop, T., Boulay, R., Castracani, C., Del Toro, I., Delsinne, T., Diaz, M., Donoso, D., Enriquez, M., Fayle, T., Feener Jr., D., Fitzpatrick, M., Gomez, C., Grasso, D., Groc, S., Heterick, Brian E., Hoffmann, B., Lach, L., Lattke, J., Leponce, M., Lessard, J., Longino, J., Lucky, A., Majer, Jonathan, Menke, S., Mezger, D., Mori, A., Munyai, T., Paknia, O., Pearce-Duvet, J., Pfeiffer, M., Philpott, S., de Souza, J., Tista, M., Vasconcelos, H., Vonshak, M., Parr, C.
Format: Journal Article
Published: The Royal Society Publishing 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41843
_version_ 1848756255972130816
author Gibb, H.
Sanders, N.
Dunn, Robert
Watson, S.
Photakis, M.
Abril, S.
Andersen, A.
Angulo, E.
Armbrecht, E.
Aman, X.
Baccaro, F.B.
Bishop, T.
Boulay, R.
Castracani, C.
Del Toro, I.
Delsinne, T.
Diaz, M.
Donoso, D.
Enriquez, M.
Fayle, T.
Feener Jr., D.
Fitzpatrick, M.
Gomez, C.
Grasso, D.
Groc, S.
Heterick, Brian E.
Hoffmann, B.
Lach, L.
Lattke, J.
Leponce, M.
Lessard, J.
Longino, J.
Lucky, A.
Majer, Jonathan
Menke, S.
Mezger, D.
Mori, A.
Munyai, T.
Paknia, O.
Pearce-Duvet, J.
Pfeiffer, M.
Philpott, S.
de Souza, J.
Tista, M.
Vasconcelos, H.
Vonshak, M.
Parr, C.
author_facet Gibb, H.
Sanders, N.
Dunn, Robert
Watson, S.
Photakis, M.
Abril, S.
Andersen, A.
Angulo, E.
Armbrecht, E.
Aman, X.
Baccaro, F.B.
Bishop, T.
Boulay, R.
Castracani, C.
Del Toro, I.
Delsinne, T.
Diaz, M.
Donoso, D.
Enriquez, M.
Fayle, T.
Feener Jr., D.
Fitzpatrick, M.
Gomez, C.
Grasso, D.
Groc, S.
Heterick, Brian E.
Hoffmann, B.
Lach, L.
Lattke, J.
Leponce, M.
Lessard, J.
Longino, J.
Lucky, A.
Majer, Jonathan
Menke, S.
Mezger, D.
Mori, A.
Munyai, T.
Paknia, O.
Pearce-Duvet, J.
Pfeiffer, M.
Philpott, S.
de Souza, J.
Tista, M.
Vasconcelos, H.
Vonshak, M.
Parr, C.
author_sort Gibb, H.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Many studies have focused on the impacts of climate change on biological assemblages, yet little is known about how climate interacts with other major anthropogenic influences on biodiversity, such as habitat disturbance. Using a unique global database of 1128 local ant assemblages, we examined whether climate mediates the effects of habitat disturbance on assemblage structure at a global scale. Species richness and evenness were associated positively with temperature, and negatively with disturbance. However, the interaction among temperature, precipitation and disturbance shaped species richness and evenness. The effect was manifested through a failure of species richness to increase substantially with temperature in transformed habitats at low precipitation. At low precipitation levels, evenness increased with temperature in undisturbed sites, peaked at medium temperatures in disturbed sites and remained low in transformed sites. In warmer climates with lower rainfall, the effects of increasing disturbance on species richness and evenness were akin to decreases in temperature of up to 9°C. Anthropogenic disturbance and ongoing climate change may interact in complicated ways to shape the structure of assemblages, with hot, arid environments likely to be at greatest risk.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T09:09:18Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-41843
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T09:09:18Z
publishDate 2015
publisher The Royal Society Publishing
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-418432017-10-18T06:05:42Z Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure Gibb, H. Sanders, N. Dunn, Robert Watson, S. Photakis, M. Abril, S. Andersen, A. Angulo, E. Armbrecht, E. Aman, X. Baccaro, F.B. Bishop, T. Boulay, R. Castracani, C. Del Toro, I. Delsinne, T. Diaz, M. Donoso, D. Enriquez, M. Fayle, T. Feener Jr., D. Fitzpatrick, M. Gomez, C. Grasso, D. Groc, S. Heterick, Brian E. Hoffmann, B. Lach, L. Lattke, J. Leponce, M. Lessard, J. Longino, J. Lucky, A. Majer, Jonathan Menke, S. Mezger, D. Mori, A. Munyai, T. Paknia, O. Pearce-Duvet, J. Pfeiffer, M. Philpott, S. de Souza, J. Tista, M. Vasconcelos, H. Vonshak, M. Parr, C. assemblage structure dominance species evenness probability of interspecific encounter (PIE) global warming Many studies have focused on the impacts of climate change on biological assemblages, yet little is known about how climate interacts with other major anthropogenic influences on biodiversity, such as habitat disturbance. Using a unique global database of 1128 local ant assemblages, we examined whether climate mediates the effects of habitat disturbance on assemblage structure at a global scale. Species richness and evenness were associated positively with temperature, and negatively with disturbance. However, the interaction among temperature, precipitation and disturbance shaped species richness and evenness. The effect was manifested through a failure of species richness to increase substantially with temperature in transformed habitats at low precipitation. At low precipitation levels, evenness increased with temperature in undisturbed sites, peaked at medium temperatures in disturbed sites and remained low in transformed sites. In warmer climates with lower rainfall, the effects of increasing disturbance on species richness and evenness were akin to decreases in temperature of up to 9°C. Anthropogenic disturbance and ongoing climate change may interact in complicated ways to shape the structure of assemblages, with hot, arid environments likely to be at greatest risk. 2015 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41843 10.1098/rspb.2015.0418 The Royal Society Publishing fulltext
spellingShingle assemblage structure
dominance
species evenness
probability of interspecific encounter (PIE)
global warming
Gibb, H.
Sanders, N.
Dunn, Robert
Watson, S.
Photakis, M.
Abril, S.
Andersen, A.
Angulo, E.
Armbrecht, E.
Aman, X.
Baccaro, F.B.
Bishop, T.
Boulay, R.
Castracani, C.
Del Toro, I.
Delsinne, T.
Diaz, M.
Donoso, D.
Enriquez, M.
Fayle, T.
Feener Jr., D.
Fitzpatrick, M.
Gomez, C.
Grasso, D.
Groc, S.
Heterick, Brian E.
Hoffmann, B.
Lach, L.
Lattke, J.
Leponce, M.
Lessard, J.
Longino, J.
Lucky, A.
Majer, Jonathan
Menke, S.
Mezger, D.
Mori, A.
Munyai, T.
Paknia, O.
Pearce-Duvet, J.
Pfeiffer, M.
Philpott, S.
de Souza, J.
Tista, M.
Vasconcelos, H.
Vonshak, M.
Parr, C.
Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
title Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
title_full Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
title_fullStr Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
title_full_unstemmed Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
title_short Climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
title_sort climate mediates the effects of disturbance on ant assemblage structure
topic assemblage structure
dominance
species evenness
probability of interspecific encounter (PIE)
global warming
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41843