JOURNAL OF NANJING FORESTRY UNIVERSITY ›› 2015, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (03): 85-90.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1000-2006.2015.03.016

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Ant communities in Yadong section of Mt. Himalaya

MO Fuyan, XU Zhenghui*, SONG Yang, LI Chunliang, HE Qiuju   

  1. Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of Forest Disaster Warning and Control, College of Forestry, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, China
  • Online:2015-05-30 Published:2015-05-30

Abstract: In order to reveal ant diversity law of Mt. Himalaya, ant communities in Yadong section were investigated using sample-plot method. Total 12 354 individuals collected from north slope, mountain valley and south slope belong to 2 subfamilies 8 genera and 12 species of Formicidae. Formica candida Smith was dominant species in ant communities in north slope and mountain valley, but Myrmica smythiesii Forel was dominant species in south slope. In the ant communities from different altitude sample-plots of Yadong section, the Fisher α indexes range from 0 to 0.95, and the Shannon-Wiener indexes range from 0 to 0.98, it showed extremely low species diversity. Ant species richness was estimated with the help of EstimateS 9.1.0 software and species accumulation curves were drawn, it showed that observed and estimated numbers of species were very similar. Ant species richness first increased then decreased as altitude increased both on north and south slopes, it means ant species richness patterns along elevational gradient conform to the mid-domain effect hypothesis. According to similarity coefficients, ant community composition and distribution of Yadong section were influenced by vegetation types and altitude.

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