ec Check List ; | > PENSUFT, Check List 18 (6): 1347-1368 https://doi.org/10.15560/18.6.1347 ANNOTATED LIST OF SPECIES Survey of ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in the city of Providence (Rhode Island, United States) and a new northern- most record for Brachyponera chinensis (Emery, 1895) JANE S. WaTERS!, NICOLE W. KEOUGH’, JOSEPH BuRT!, JONATHAN D. ECKEL!, TREY HUTCHINSON!, JONATHAN EWANCHUK’, MATTHEW ROCK!, JEFFREY A. MARKERT!, HEATHER J. AXEN°’, DAVID GREGG* 1 Department of Biology, Providence College, Providence, RI, USA « JSW: jwaters2@providence.edu « JB: joeyburt45@gmail.com « JDE: jeckel@friars.providence.edu « TH: breahutchinson@yahoo.com « JE: jonathan@ewanchuk.com « MR: mrock2@friars. providence.edu « JAM: jmarkert@providence.edu 2 Department of Entomology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA *» NWK: nwkorzeniecki@ucdavis.edu 3 Department of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI, USA « HJA: heather.axen@salve.edu 4 Rhode Island Natural History Survey, Kingston, Rhode Island, USA « DG: dgregg@rinhs.org * Corresponding author Abstract. We surveyed ants in Providence, Rhode Island, from 2015 to 2019. Methods including repeated pitfall trap sampling and manual searching were used to collect ants at Providence College and a rapid biological assess- ment was conducted at Roger Williams Park. A total of 36 species were identified based on morphology, including the first observations of a colony of Needle Ants (Brachyponera chinensis Emery, 1895) in New England. Twenty- six species identified were new county records and seven species were new state records, representing a substantial update to the list of known ant species in Rhode Island, currently totaling 41 species in Providence and 69 spe- cies from six subfamilies across the state. These results are comparable with similarly scaled surveys conducted at parks and cities across the world, and they also offer a reminder that while urbanization can be associated with reductions in habitat availability for some fauna, cities can be accessible and ecologically important locations for exploring myrmecological biodiversity. Keywords. BioBlitz, biodiversity, cities, Needle Ants, survey, urban ecology Academic editor: Livia Pires do Prado Received 26 July 2022, accepted 3 December 2022, published 21 December 2022 Waters JS, Keough NW, Burt J, Eckel JD, Hutchinson T, Ewanchuk J, Rock M, Markert JA, Axen HJ, Gregg D (2022) Survey of ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in the city of Providence (Rhode Island, United States) and anew northern-most record for Brachyponera chinensis (Emery, 1895). Check List 18 (6): 1347-1368. https://doi.org/10.15560/18.6.1347 Introduction Biodiversity data and the species distributions of many Ants are among the most ecologically successful ani- ant taxa have been widely studied, making them a key the journal of biodiversity data mals on the planet. Their social nature allows them to operate as complex adaptive systems, responding to and structuring ecological communities, providing critical ecosystem services, and with the potential to impact economic stability and agricultural productiv- ity (Davidson 1997; Del Toro et al. 2012; Evans et al. 2011; King et al. 2013; McGlynn 1999; Ward 2006). indicator species for identifying disturbed habitats and effects of climate change (Dunn et al. 2007; Jenkins et al. 2011). While the diversity of ants in many places has been relatively well sampled, this was not the case for Rhode Island, a state at the southern coastal boundary of New England where it may have a higher likelihood for biotic introductions and potential colonizations by ©The authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 1348 introduced species. Rhode Island’s geological history was strongly in- fluenced by glaciation events 14,000 years ago and its diverse habitats now include maritime coastal and wet- land systems, freshwater wetlands, forests, peatlands, lakes and ponds, salt marshes, pine barrens, farmland, islands, and urban and suburban residential and indus- trial areas (RIDEM 2015). Although it is a small state, it has the highest ratio of coastline to land area of any state, and it is the second most densely populated state in the country. The capital city, Providence, is a gateway to Narragansett Bay, providing shipping access for the state’s primary export (scrap metal) and it is also home to many universities and College campuses. In 1906, William Morton Wheeler documented 84 species of ants across New England but only 12 species of ants in Rhode Island (Wheeler 1906). More than a century later, Aaron Ellison and colleagues exhaustively compiled 28,205 ant specimen records from across New England and published a guide to the 132 described species of ants in this region, including 47 in Rhode Island and 13 from Providence (Ellison et al. 2012). A recent targeted survey of a small parcel near the south- ern-most extremity of the state added nine new species to the list from Rhode Island (Ellison and Farnsworth 2014). Since the most under-surveyed part of the state remained Providence County, we focused on surveying two urban sites in the city of Providence (Fig. 1A) which were accessible to students engaged in this project on campus at Providence College (PC) and at Roger Wil- liams Park (RWP). Study Area Providence College was founded in Providence in 1917 and the College community is made up of about 5,000 students who, together with faculty, administrative staff, and Dominican Friars, are engaged in study on a campus of 0.43 km? located adjacent to the Elmhurst, Smith Hill, and Wanskuck neighborhoods within the city (Fig. 1B). The campus consists of about 50 build- ings (including academic, dining, residential, religious, and athletics facilities) on heavily maintained grounds. A recent campus inventory counted more than 1,000 trees from 65 species. The largest public park in Provi- dence, Roger Williams Park (1.7 km?) is located on the south side of the city approximately 11 km from Provi- dence College (Fig. 1C). The park is located on land that was a gift from the Narragansett people to Roger Wil- liams in 1638. It was, for a while, used as farmland, and then gifted to the people of Providence in 1872. Roger Williams Park is now home to a zoo, museum, ponds, a boathouse, the Providence Police Department’s Mount- ed Command center, sporting fields, a botanical garden, a concert venue, and many walking paths and roads supporting vehicular traffic. Like Providence College, Roger Williams Park is surrounded by a densely inhab- ited residential neighborhood with nearby commercial and industrial districts. Check List 18 (6) Methods At Providence College, the primary survey method in- volved a repeated sampling protocol using pitfall traps. The traps were made from 50 mL plastic centrifuge vi- als filled with approximately 15 mL of soapy water, and they were placed in the ground so that the top of the vial was level with the surface. A total of 39 traps were spread throughout campus (Fig. 1D). Twelve locations were chosen at random, avoiding athletic fields and lo- cations with impenetrable surfaces. Three pitfall traps were placed in a 10 m radius at each of these locations and an additional pitfall trap was placed at each of the three bioswale locations on campus which were de- signed with specific native vegetation to receive excess rainwater runoff. For each of the 10 weeks of the survey, a student deployed the 39 traps on one day of the week, retrieved them two days later (aiming to select days with minimal expected rainfall), and closed empty vials were left as placeholders in the ground between capture periods. Each week, the numbers of ants and other in- vertebrates were counted; ants averaged more than 80% of the specimens captured but their abundance varied across locations on campus and over the duration of the 10-week period (Figs. 2, 3). Specimen sorting and iden- tification of the 1,853 ants from the pitfall traps took approximately two years (Table 1). Additionally, baiting and manual collecting by students were conducted in subsequent years to expand on the results of the pitfall trap survey. At Roger Williams Park, the Rhode Island Natural History Survey (https://rinhs.org) organized a BioBlitz rapid biological assessment event to catalog as many living things present over a 24-hour window, from 2 pm on May 31 to 2 pm on June 1, 2019. This event has been organized annually by the RINHS at different locations across Rhode Island for the last 20 years. Volunteer ex- perts worked together with members of the general public, walking throughout the park, making observa- tions, and returning collected specimens as necessary to an ad-hoc science center with resources for identi- fication (including microscopes, reference books, in- sect pinning supplies, etc.). A total of 145 individuals actively engaged in the survey. Of these, 5-10 individu- als were actively searching for ants, though many other participants donated ant specimens found among their samples. Collected ants were preserved in ethanol, a subset of these were pinned, and specimens were identified us- ing morphological characters and dichotomous keys (Ellison et al. 2012a). In the course of our work, speci- mens were examined under Motic and Wild stereomi- croscopes (Martin Microscope Company, Easley, SC, USA) at 10-50x. Specimens were photographed using a Canon 6D, MP-E 65 mm 1-5x lens and with a com- mercially available focus-stacking system (Brecko et al. 2014). Specimen records were maintained in an on- line database and voucher specimens for each species we report new observations for were deposited with the Waters et al. | Ants of Providence 42°N sesnyoesse|/| PROVIDENCE COUNTY 41.8°N Connecticut ey BRISTOL Ss a SAY Of 41.6°N WASHINGTON COUNTY NEWPORT . COUNTY Narragansett Bay 41.4°N The State of Rhode Island U.S.A. Block Island Sound 41.2°N 7) Campus of Providence College Providence, R.I. k e Treacy traci ; Harkins bioswale i e Priory e e McVinney e Aquinas hall e River gate e Upper campus e Al Mag bioswale e Library bioswale 41.842 41.843 41.844 41.845 41.846 ELMHURST NEIGHBORHOOD 41.841 1349 Pr WANSKUCK NEIGHBORHOOD Py Raymond hall : Lower campus e Davis hall e P e St. Catherine © President's house e Smith center 100m SMITH HILL NEIGHBORHOOD -71.440 -71.438 -71.436 -71.434 -71.432 -71.430 -71.428 Figure 1. Survey sites. A. The state of Rhode Island with its municipal borders drawn and five counties labeled; the city of Provi- dence is highlighted in black within the county of Providence. B. Aerial photograph of Providence College. C. Aerial photograph of Roger Williams Park. D. Map of Providence College showing the 15 pitfall trap locations. Cornell University Insect Collection (Ithaca, NY, USA). To confirm the morphological identification of Brachyponera chinensis, a species that was unexpected in the region, DNA barcoding was used for sequence- based identification (Hebert et al. 2003). Whole ants were extracted using a QIAGEN DNeasy Blood and Tissue extraction kit following the manufacturer’s di- rections (QIAGEN Sciences, Germantown, MD, USA). Individual ants were pulverized in the digestion buffer (ATL + Proteinase K) using a dounce. DNA was eluted 1350 Check List 18 (6) 40 30 20 10 . | Upper campus Harkins Bioswale in McVinney President's house ® ce) c sou 10 c : . WA AWA Oy) ‘ ‘ ’