Ants of the Palouse Prairie: diversity and species composition in an endangered grassland

By

Dilworth, Kayla
Borowiec, Marek
Cohen, Abigail
Mickelson, Gabrielle
Oeller, Elisabeth
Crowder, David
Clark, Robert

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2021-05-10

Original Publication

Biodiversity data journal

Volume

9

Pages

1--21

Subjects

agroecosystems , ant biodiversity , Insect conservation , Insect conservation , Palouse Prairie , Prairies , rapid species inventory

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft Publishers [2013]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.9.e65768
eLocator: e65768

 

Abstract

Grasslands are globally imperilled ecosystems due to widespread conversion to agriculture and there is a concerted effort to catalogue arthropod diversity in grasslands to guide conservation decisions. The Palouse Prairie is one such endangered grassland; a mid-elevation habitat found in Washington and Idaho, United States. Ants (Formicidae) are useful indicators of biodiversity and historical ecological disturbance, but there has been no structured sampling of ants in the Palouse Prairie. To fill this gap, we employed a rapid inventory sampling approach using pitfall traps to capture peak ant activity in five habitat fragments. We complemented our survey with a systemic review of field studies for the ant species found in Palouse Prairie. Our field inventory yielded 17 ant species across 10 genera and our models estimate the total ant species pool to be 27. The highest ant diversity was found in an actively-managed ecological trust in Latah County, Idaho, suggesting that restoration efforts may increase biodiversity. We also report two rarely-collected ants in the Pacific Northwest and a microgyne that may represent an undescribed species related to Brachymyrmex depilis. Our score-counting review revealed that grassland ants in Palouse Prairie have rarely been studied previously and that more ant surveys in temperate grasslands have lagged behind sampling efforts of other global biomes.