TY  - JOUR
AU  - Salas-Lopez, A.
AU  - Violle, C.
AU  - Mallia, L.
AU  - Orivel, J.
PY  - 2018//
TI  - Land-use change effects on the taxonomic and morphological trait composition of ant communities in French Guiana
T2  - Insect Conserv Divers
JO  - Insect Conservation and Diversity
SP  - 162
EP  - 173
VL  - 11
IS  - 2
PB  - John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111)
KW  - Community assembly
KW  - Formicidae
KW  - functional diversity
KW  - gradient analysis
KW  - habitat filtering
KW  - land-use intensification
KW  - n-dimensional hypervolume approach
N2  - Abstract Land-use changes frequently lead to major changes in the composition and diversity of organisms. A reduction in the range of strategies enabling organisms to survive in a given environment and changes in the average trait values of species may potentially be associated with variations in species? number and identity. We investigated the variation in ant taxonomic composition and morphological trait diversity along a land-use gradient in French Guiana. We measured 13 core ant morphological traits on all species sampled. We then selected the set of five traits that best captured changes along the land-use gradient. Potential effects of the variation in morphological trait diversity and average values were evaluated by examining morphological traits individually as well as in combination. We found that variation in taxonomic diversity was unrelated to the plot-level morphospace. Conversely, a significant shift in taxonomic composition was accompanied by changes in the average values of community traits along the studied gradient, examined both individually and in combination. We argue that morphological trait values may be related to the success of different species in surviving in a given environment and, therefore, are indicative of the taxonomic turnover in ants along the land-use gradient. Nevertheless, in contradiction with theoretical expectations, the morphospace is only slightly affected by habitat filtering and loosely impacted by taxonomic changes. Examining the sensitivity of the morphospace to abiotic and biotic factors and how it reflects varying ecological pressures for species is thus of the utmost importance.
SN  - 1752-458x
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12248
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/icad.12248
N1  - doi: 10.1111/icad.12248
ID  - Salas-Lopez_etal2018
ER  -