Estructura de la comunidad de formicidae (hymenoptera) en dos agroecosistemas con diferente grado de perturbación

Several studies about the disposition of the community of Formicidae in the soil when facing different conditions of the agroecosystems were performed given the advance of the agricultural frontier. The abundance of tolerant species is common in these environments with negative consequences in wealth and diversity, although there are experiments with observations to the contrary. The hypothesis of this study was that characterizing the structure of the community allows detecting differences in the response of these insects towards diverse types of agricultural activity. The objective was to carry out an ecological analysis of the composition and abundance of the species of ants in two crops with different level of agricultural management: a plantation with aloe, Aloe vera (L.) Burm F. and another with maize, Zea mays L., and the reference was an area of secondary vegetation (uncultivated area). The study was performed in the ejido of San Lorenzo, municipality of Jaumave, state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. For sampling, 30 “pitfall” traps were used per site, between July and August 2013, with four repetitions every 15 d. Characterization of the structure of the ant communities in the three environments was obtained through measurements of wealth, diversity, indicator value and multivariate methods. The results showed 32 species of ants. The highest wealth was in the uncultivated area, the highest diversity in the maize crop, and the highest abundance in the aloe crop. Two species were indicators of the aloe crop and four species of the uncultivated area. The multivariate analyses showed significant association in the frequency of ants captured with the type of crop and the species. The structure of the ant community depended on the site and the season.