Ant-mediated seed dispersal in a warmed world
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Climate Change Biology, Ecology, Natural Resource Management
- Keywords
- ants, climate change, myrmecochory, seed dispersal, warming
- Copyright
- © 2013 Stuble et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Cite this article
- 2013. Ant-mediated seed dispersal in a warmed world. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e137v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.137v2
Abstract
Climate change affects communities both directly and indirectly via changes in interspecific interactions. One such interaction that may be altered under climate change is the ant-plant seed dispersal mutualism common in deciduous forests of the eastern US. As climatic warming alters the abundance and activity levels of ants, the potential exists for shifts in rates of ant-mediated seed removal. We used an experimental temperature manipulation at two sites in the eastern US (Harvard Forest in Massachusetts and Duke Forest in North Carolina) to examine the potential impacts of climatic warming on overall rates of seed dispersal (using Asarum canadense seeds) as well as species-specific rates of seed dispersal at the Duke Forest site. We also examined the relationship between ant critical thermal maxima (CTmax) and the mean seed removal temperature for each ant species. We found that seed removal rates did not change as a result of experimental warming at either study site, nor were there any changes in species-specific rates of seed dispersal. There was, however, a positive relationship between CTmax and mean seed removal temperature, whereby species with higher CTmax removed more seeds at hotter temperatures. The temperature at which seeds were removed was influenced by experimental warming as well as diurnal and day-to-day fluctuations in temperature. Taken together, our results suggest that while temperature may play a role in regulating seed removal by ants, ant plant seed-dispersal mutualisms may be more robust to climate change than currently assumed.