Latitudinal patterns in European ant assemblages variation in species richness and body size

Using published distributions of 65 species from the British Isles and northern Europe, we show that ant assemblages change with latitude in two ways. First, as commonly found for many types of organisms, the number of ant species decreased significantly with increasing latitude. For Ireland and Gre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Oecologia 1993-03, Vol.95 (1), p.30-37
Main Authors: Cushman, J.H, Lawton, J.H, Manly, B.F.J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Ants
Biological and medical sciences
Body length
Body size
ecology
Fauna
Formicidae
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hymenoptera
Insect colonies
Insect ecology
Invertebrates
latitude
size
Social insects
Species
Starvation
Synecology
Terrestrial ecosystems
Worker insects
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Summary:Using published distributions of 65 species from the British Isles and northern Europe, we show that ant assemblages change with latitude in two ways. First, as commonly found for many types of organisms, the number of ant species decreased significantly with increasing latitude. For Ireland and Great Britain, species richness also increased significantly with region area. Second, although rarely demonstrated for ectotherms, the body size of ant species, as measured by worker length, increased significantly with increasing latitude. We found that this body-size pattern existed in the subfamily Formicinae and, to a lesser extent, in the Myrmicinae, which together comprised 95% of the ant species in our study area. There was a trend for formicines to increase in size with latitude faster than myrmicines. We also show that the pattern of increasing body size was due primarily to the ranges of ant species shifting to higher latitudes as their body sizes increased, with larger formicines becoming less represented at southerly latitudes and larger myrmicines becoming more represented at northerly latitudes. We conclude by discussing five potential mechanisms for generating the observed body-size patterns: the heat-conservation hypothesis, two hypotheses concerning phylogenetic history, the migration-ability hypothesis, and the starvation-resistance hypothesis.
ISSN:0029-8549
1432-1939
DOI:10.1007/bf00649503