Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

ProfessorRobertEwers

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences (Silwood Park)

Professor of Ecology
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 2223r.ewers

 
 
//

Location

 

1.4Centre for Population BiologySilwood Park

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Gray:2018:10.1038/s41598-018-23272-y,
author = {Gray, R and Ewers, R and Boyle, M and Chung, A and Gill, RJ},
doi = {10.1038/s41598-018-23272-y},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
title = {Effect of tropical forest disturbance on the competitive interactions within a diverse ant community},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23272-y},
volume = {8},
year = {2018}
}
Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Understanding  how  anthropogenic  disturbance  influences  patterns  of  community composition  and  the  reinforcing  interactive  processes  that  structure  communities  is  important  to  mitigate  threats  to  biodiversity.  Competition  is  considered  a  primary  reinforcing process, yet little is known concerning disturbance effects on competitive interaction  networks.We  examined  how  differences  in  ant  community  composition   between  undisturbed  and  disturbed  Bornean  rainforest,  is  potentially  reflected  by   changes  in  competitive  interactions  over  a  food  resource.  Comparing  10  primary  forest  sites  to  10  in  selectively-logged  forest,  we  found  higher  genus  richness  and  diversity in the primary forest, with 18.5% and 13.0% of genera endemic to primary and  logged  respectively.  From  180  hours  of  filming  bait  cards,  we  assessed  ant-ant  interactions,   finding   that   despite   considered   aggression   over   food   sources,   the  majority of ant interactions were neutral. Proportion of competitive interactions at bait cards  did  not  differ  between  forest  type,  however,  the  rate  and  per  capita  number  of  competitive  interactions  was  significantly  lower  in  logged  forest.  Furthermore,  the  majority  of  genera  showed  large  changes  in  aggression-score  with  often  inverse relationships   to   their   occupancy   rank.   This   provides   evidence   of   a   shuffled   competitive network, and these unexpected changes in aggressive relationships could be considered a type of competitive network re-wiring after disturbance.
AU  - Gray,R
AU  - Ewers,R
AU  - Boyle,M
AU  - Chung,A
AU  - Gill,RJ
DO  - 10.1038/s41598-018-23272-y
PY  - 2018///
SN  - 2045-2322
TI  - Effect of tropical forest disturbance on the competitive interactions within a diverse ant community
T2  - Scientific Reports
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23272-y
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/57535
VL  - 8
ER  -
Download