Ant diversity
In total, 48,015 ants corresponding to 5462 occurrences, 197
morphospecies, 36 genera, 17 tribes and 7 subfamilies were
collected. A single transect of 20 pitfall traps contained between 57
and 263 occurrences (median ¼ 140, n ¼ 36) and between 24 and
56 ant species (median ¼ 39, n ¼ 36). The number of observed ant
species per locality ranged from 36 to 74 and from 65 to 71 between
sampling years at locality 7 (Table 1). After three sampling years at
the latter, 101 morphospecies (1705 occurrences) were collected.
Most occurrence-based rarefaction curves were decreasing in slope
but barely reached an asymptote, indicating that sampling was
incomplete at almost every locality (Fig. 1). Nevertheless, on
average about 80% of the local estimated species richness (Chao2)
was collected.