Interactive effects of urbanization and year on invasive and native ant diversity of sacred groves of South India
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Interactive effects of urbanization and year on invasive and native ant diversity of sacred groves of South India T.P. Rajesh 1 & U. Prashanth Ballullaya 1 & Anjana P. Unni 1 & Surendran Parvathy 2 & Palatty Allesh Sinu 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Urbanization is a major threat to native biodiversity. Invasion of tramp species is a major consequence of urbanization, which might threaten native species. Ants are established robust ecosystem indicators. We assessed the changes of ant community in sacred groves (SGs) of urban and rural landscapes of south India between 2013 and 2019, and asked, 1) what is the effect of urbanization on ant community? 2) has the population of invasive ants, particularly Anoplolepis gracilipes – a globally notorious tramp species, changed in response to urbanization and year? 3) is species composition of ants in SGs different between landscapes and years? and 4) has the population of native ants or any ant functional groups responded with the population of invasive ants? The richness of overall species, native species, and invasive species was not affected by year or landscape, but the abundance was. In six years, the abundance of ants doubled, but due to A. gracilipes. A. gracilipes, previously restricted only in the urban SGs had established in rural SGs in six years. A significant turnover of native species was observed across years and with the population rise of A. gracilipes. While Generalist Myrmecines and Tropical Climate Specialists increased with the abundance of invasive ants, Cryptic Species decreased. We consider the stability maintained in the native species composition and richness in SGs, the aftermath of the conditions provided by SGs. However, the evident shift in the composition of native ants over the years point out how invasive ants affect the native species composition. Keywords Urbanization . Invasive ants . Anoplolepis gracilipes . Tramp species . Native ants . Sacred groves
Introduction Urbanization, despite may create new habitat for resilient wildlife (Roshnath and Sinu 2017), can lead to destruction of habitat of many species and invasion by tramp species, which results in species competition, displacement, and extinction of species (Shochat et al. 2010; Buczkowski and Richmond 2012). Biotic invasion seems to be a major impact of urbanization (McKinney and Lockwood 1999; Alberti et al. 2001). The invasive species use urban environment for entering, invading, and colonizing natural wild landscapes around urban areas. Long-term biodiversity monitoring in urban-rural Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01007-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Palatty Allesh Sinu [email protected] 1
Central University of Kerala, Periya, Kerala 671 316, India
2
Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thycaud Post, Thiruvananthapuram-14, India
gradient can inform us the complex pattern of urbanizationdriven invas
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