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1 August 2015 Local and Landscape Drivers of Ant Parasitism in a Coffee Landscape
Aldo De La Mora, Gabriela Pérez-Lachaud, Jean-Paul Lachaud, Stacy M. Philpott
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Abstract

Parasitism of ants that nest in rotting wood by eucharitid wasps was studied in order to examine whether habitat and season influence ant parasitism, vegetation complexity and agrochemical use correlate with ant parasitism, and whether specific local and landscape features of agricultural landscapes correlate with changes in ant parasitism. In a coffee landscape, 30 coffee and 10 forest sites were selected in which local management (e.g., vegetation, agrochemical use) and landscape features (e.g., distance to forest, percent of rustic coffee nearby) were characterized. Rotten logs were sampled and ant cocoons were collected from logs and cocoons were monitored for parasitoid emergence. Sixteen ant morphospecies in three ant subfamilies (Ectatomminae, Ponerinae, and Formicinae) were found. Seven ant species parasitized by two genera of Eucharitidae parasitoids (Kapala and Obeza) were reported and some ant-eucharitid associations were new. According to evaluated metrics, parasitism did not differ with habitat (forest, high-shade coffee, low-shade coffee), but did increase in the dry season for Gnamptogenys ants. Parasitism increased with vegetation complexity for Gnamptogenys and Pachycondyla and was high in sites with both high and low agrochemical use. Two landscape variables and two local factors positively correlated with parasitism for some ant genera and species. Thus, differences in vegetation complexity at the local and landscape scale and agrochemical use in coffee landscapes alter ecological interactions between parasitoids and their ant hosts.

© The Authors 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
Aldo De La Mora, Gabriela Pérez-Lachaud, Jean-Paul Lachaud, and Stacy M. Philpott "Local and Landscape Drivers of Ant Parasitism in a Coffee Landscape," Environmental Entomology 44(4), 939-950, (1 August 2015). https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvv071
Received: 23 August 2014; Accepted: 8 April 2015; Published: 1 August 2015
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KEYWORDS
coffee
Eucharitidae
Formicidae
vegetation complexity
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