Biodiversidade de formigas de serapilheira do Parque Nacional da Serra da Bodoquena - MS

Abstract

This study represents the first systematic Formicidae survey in the Bodoquena Mountain Range National Park – state of Mato Grosso do Sul - Brazil. We have compared two distinct areas in domain of Deciduals Forests along the Bodoquena mountain range with 10 sites: 5 in the north portion and 5 in the south portion. Our first goal was to describe the leaf-litter ant fauna and compare the community structure between the NorthSouth portions. We believe that it is possible to compare several areas using structured sampling as ALL protocol for the measure of litter ant communities, to estimate the distributions of species abundance, community species richness and the variation in species composition among sites. A total of 169 cryptic leaf-litter ant species were identified in this surveing distributed into 46 genera and 11 subfamilies: Amblyoponinae, Cerapachyinae, Dolichoderinae, Ecitoninae, Ectatomminae, Formicinae, Leptanilloidinae, Myrmicinae, Ponerinae, Proceratiinae, Pseudomyrmecinae. A high incidence of rare species was observed and new species were recorded. The leaf-litter ant communities showed a high richness and diversity indices values. Species accumulation curves showed about 73% of total fauna estimate was registered. The richest genera in species number following: Hypoponera (21), Pheidole (17), Cyphomyrmex (12), Solenopsis (11) e Octostruma (8). New records were obtained for the region including Asphinctanilloides, Amblyopone, Cryptomyrmex and Probolomyrmex. Our results presents that the areas studied showed different arrangements in the composition of the ant fauna, with a replacement of species dominance for each sampling point, indicating high beta diversity. The results suggest that the Bodoquena mountain range complex has influence of the neighbors systems as Amazonian, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest and Pantanal complex, acts as a connection area between these different kinds of environments.