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Baited pitfall traps designs8/16/2023 ![]() ![]() We conducted collections in areas with five different land uses and land cover, which were classified into: i) preserved forest - PF (area with little or no disturbance identified in the last hundred years, where we used geoprocessing of satellite images, interviews with residents, and on-site visits) ii) secondary forest - SF15, in an intermediate stage of regeneration with 15 years of fallow iii) secondary forest - SF5, in an initial stage of regeneration with five years of fallow as in preserved forests, we used geoprocessing of satellite images, interviews with residents, and on-site visits to estimate the age of secondary forests iv) agricultural areas - Ag (cocoa crop, Theobroma cacao), and v) pasture area - Pa (extensive livestock) - see details of the study areas in Cajaiba et al. Study location: The study was carried out in the state of Pará, Northern Brazil, in an Amazon rainforest region, during the year 2015, in the months of February/March (rainy season), June (final of rainy season and early dry season) and September/October (dry season). In addressing these questions, we attempt to build a framework of reference, which should help researchers to evaluate the trade-offs between sampling completeness and the costs and time required ( Souza et al., 2012). Our objective was to test whether there are effects of different sampling techniques on the abundance, richness, and composition of soil ant species between each method. In pitfall traps, we used two types of baits, banana and sardines, in addition to the non-baited, that is, pitfall without baits. Although the combined use of these two techniques results in some redundancy ( Lopes & Vasconcelos, 2008 Souza et al., 2012), they are essential for estimating species richness in megadiverse regions ( Delabie et al., 2000b). In this study, we compared the performance of two methods usually used for catching soil ants: manual litter collection and pitfall traps ( Nakamura et al., 2007). As a result, many ant inventories employ more than one sampling technique because their use in combination often increases sampling efficiency ( Wong & Guénard, 2017 Lee & Guénard, 2019 Salata et al., 2020).Īnts have been the subject of several ecological studies and have been sampled by various methods, including pitfall traps, bait traps, litter sampling, fogging, beating the vegetation and manual harvesting ( Orsolon-Souza et al., 2011 Yusah et al., 2012 Cajaiba & Silva, 2014 Antoniazzi et al., 2020). Therefore, it is important to compare the efficiency of the various techniques for sampling ant diversity in one place to advance knowledge about ant fauna in hyper-diverse regions, especially in the litter ( Castilho et al., 2007 Veiga-Ferreira et al., 2010 Hanisch et al., 2018). Ant community researchers suggest combining different techniques as the best way to estimate ant richness and abundance ( Delabie et al., 2000a Longino et al., 2002 Gotelli et al., 2011). No method can collect all the species that inhabit a specific area because these species usually have a great diversity of foraging and nesting habits ( Pacheco & Vasconcelos, 2012 Salata et al., 2020). Several methodologies have been used to collect ants from the soil, each of which has limitations. Because of these characteristics, ants have frequently been used as a focal taxon in biodiversity studies or as bioindicators in soil management studies ( Schimidt & Solar, 2010 Pacheco & Vasconcelos, 2012). In addition, they contribute in an extraordinary way to the edaphic processes, such as the movement of water and soil and the cycling of nutrients ( Sousa-Souto et al., 2007). ![]() They play critical ecological roles, acting as herbivores, seed dispersers, or predators of other arthropods and scavengers ( Del Toro et al., 2012 Andersen, 2019). Ants are a hyperdiverse group in tropical forests and particularly important in the soil macrofauna, as they are highly abundant, have a wide geographical distribution, and occupy a wide variety of niches ( Andersen & Majer, 2004 Solar et al., 2016 Tiede et al., 2017). However, it is challenging to estimate species richness in megadiverse regions because the techniques used by researchers do not always provide a representative sample of total richness ( Agosti & Alonso, 2001 Orsolon-Souza et al., 2011 Tista & Fiedler, 2011). Studies of soil macrofauna require well-structured and standardized sampling methodologies to adequately estimate species richness and uniformity ( Véle et al., 2009). ![]()
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