Tree preference and temporal activity patterns for a native ant community in an urbanized California woodland
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
Anthropogenic disturbances, including land use change and exotic species, can alter the diversity and dynamics of ant communities. To examine foraging behavior in an urbanized habitat in northern California, we surveyed the presence of 9 ant species on 876 trees across 4 seasons during both day and night in a 9.5-hectare urbanized oak-exotic woodland. Ants were more likely to be observed on native, evergreen trees, suggesting that native evergreen species may help maintain ant diversity. Species showed clear patterns of temporal partitioning of foraging activity. Ant species varied in their use of native evergreen Quercus agrifolia trees across season and day/night axes. Of the 3 ant species most frequently observed, Camponotus semitestaceus was most active during spring and summer nights, Formica moki was most active during spring and summer days, and Prenolepis imparis was most active during both day and night during fall and winter. Liometopum occidentale was the second most active species during summer day and night, and winter day. Our findings demonstrate that a mixed oak exotic urban woodland in Northern California was able to maintain a native ant community, and strong temporal partitioning within that community.
The attached data archive contains data collected during this project, and R code used for data analysis and data visualization. Metadata are included in the data files.
Description
Type of resource | software, multimedia |
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Date created | May 2017 |
Creators/Contributors
Collector | MacArthur-Waltz, Dylan |
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Collector | Lee, Gail |
Collector | Nelson, Rebecca |
Collector | Gu, Angela |
Collector | Coleman, Duncan |
Collector | Glockner, Eleanor |
Collector | Fukunaga, Julie |
Collector | Lan, Katie |
Collector | Vogt, Miranda |
Principal investigator | Gordon, Deborah |
Subjects
Subject | Stanford University Department of Biology |
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Subject | Ants |
Subject | Niche Partitioning |
Subject | Coexistence |
Subject | Oak Woodland |
Subject | Stanford University Arboretum |
Genre | Dataset |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- MacArthur-Waltz, Dylan and Lee, Gail and Nelson, Rebecca and Gu, Angela and Coleman, Duncan and Glockner, Eleanor and Fukunaga, Julie and Lan, Katie and Vogt, Miranda. (2017). Tree preference and temporal activity patterns for a native ant community in an urbanized California woodland. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/qz365hg2497
Collection
Stanford Research Data
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- Contact
- dmgordon@stanford.edu
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