Ant Diversity in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Part III
Ant Diversity in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Part III
Our research group has spent two very successful summers collecting leaf litter ants in deciduous forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We have also processed all of the samples from Chuck Parker’s “pilot ATBI study.” Here, we propose to initiate a sampling regime for leaf litter ants in a variety of other ecosystems, focusing on high elevation sites, and continuing to sample at three apparently high diversity sites (Twin Creeks, Tremont, and in the Nolan Creek watershed).
We continued our quest for obscure, little studied ants that are found strictly in the leaflitter. To date, we have focused much of out attention on ants in several common genera. Recently, however, we have begun to detect species that are in need of much taxonomic revision. Put simply, scientists just haven’t studied them enough to know anything about them. In addition, our work is beginning to uncover some potential causes of spatial variation in ant diversity. In the past year, we have published 5 manuscripts on ant diversity in GSMNP.
