Padrões temporais de forrageamento e partição do nicho em comunidades de formigas epigeas

Abstract

The co-occurrence of ant species in one same community can reflect the niche partition in different scales, including the time scale. For test the hypothesis of different ants forage in different times, we measured the temporal sobreposition level in two ant communities associated to two distinct and contiguous phytophisionomys, a natural native vegetation area comprising for a dry seasonal semi-deciduous forest and a pasture area. We used forage hours data for analyze the temporal sobreposition levels between species pairs and a null model for evaluate if the general sobrepositions levels founded in studied communities differ of the possible levels of sobreposition observed according to the coincidence. With this results was possible observe a significant difference between the present communities in pasture and in semi-deciduous forest both in composition as the niche analysis. Both communities, pasture ants and forest ants, have a modular structure, where there clear division between the fractions of the communities that forage during the day and night. The null models analysis indicate just the sobreposition levels in the pasture differ from expected due to chance.