Phylogenetic structure of ant assemblages
The seven ant subfamilies collected globally occurred
throughout the whole precipitation gradient (Fig. 3). Myrmicinae
was the most species-rich subfamily at all localities. Ecitoninae and
Ponerinae were rarely collected and their absence in some localities
was probably due to stochastic effects. Only four Pseudomyrmecinae
species were collected. Consequently, this subfamily contributed
only little to the observed species richness of any locality
(Fig. 3A). In terms of occurrences however, this subfamily was not
rare (Fig. 3B) due to the numerical dominance of Pseudomyrmex
denticollis (mean percentage of occurrences for this
species SD ¼ 9.2 4.6%). The number of genera per locality
ranged from 15 (locality 3) to 24 (locality 2; Table 1). Percentages of
all ant subfamilies, in terms of genus numbers, species numbers
and occurrences, were not related to precipitation or soil texture
(P > 0.05; Dutilleul’s corrected t-test for correlation). Similarly,
rarefied and extrapolated genus richness and percentages of genus
in terms of occurrences were also not related to precipitation or soil
texture (P > 0.05).
The phylogenetic structure of three local ant assemblages were
clumped (NRI of localities 2, 3 and 11 is significantly larger than
expected by chance but NTI is not; Table 1). Other local ant
assemblages globally behaved like a random subsample of the
regional species pool.