Impacts of Climate Change on ants

In the eastern US, ants are integral to plant biodiversity because they help disperse seeds. But ants ability to perform this vital function, may be jeopardized by climate change, according to Nate Sanders, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Sanders and his collaborators have received a grant for nearly $2 million from the National Science Foundation to examine the cascading effects of climate change on ant communities and the ecosystem functions they provide.

Sanders and his colleagues tested the effects of climate change on ants by heating up patches of forest and tracking how the ants respond and noticed dramatic changes in the ants daily activity.

"If the temperature increases by just a half a degree Celsius, the most important seed-dispersing ants basically shut down," said Sanders.

They observed that, on an average, the ants foraged for about 10 hours a day at normal temperatures. When temperatures were raised just a half a degree, the ants stayed in their nests underground and foraged just an hour.

The absence of ants seed dispersal and nutrient cycling could have profound influence on biodiversity. For instance, it is believed that more than half of the plants in the forest understory of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park rely on ants for seed dispersal. Ants are found in ecosystems everywhere but in Antarctica and Iceland.

"We know that climate change is happening, lots of models make predictions about how biodiversity is going to respond. It will either respond by adapting, moving or going extinct. If you can't keep up with climate change, you will go extinct," Sanders said.

Source: eurekalert.org