Temporal Turnover of Species Maintains Ant Diversity but Transforms Species Assemblage Recovering from Fire Disturbance

Abstract

The rupestrian complex is a montane transitional vegetation type between the Brazilian Savanna (‘Cerrado’) and the Atlantic Forest, frequently threatened by human activities. In this study, we evaluated the recovery to fire disturbance of ant fauna in an environment evolved under fire regime. We confirmed that the ant diversity recovers quickly after the fire. However, our results show that ant assemblage in burned areas presented greater ant’s foraging activity, here detected as higher abundance. The ant composition changed over time, being that species turnover lead to a strikingly different species composition comparing burned to unburned areas after 16 months of recovering. In fact, both areas changed their ant composition through species turnover, but we believe that the mechanisms that act in species turnover are different in each area. Along time, in burned areas the fauna maintained a constant species diversity but dramatically changed species assemblage due to appearance of several species not found in the unburned area.