Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Communities of the Southern Cumberland Plateau

The Cumberland Plateau supports diverse plant communities that vary greatly across cove and plateau habitats. Unfortunately, little is known about how terrestrial invertebrate communities vary across cove andplateauhabitats andhowdisturbanceaffects these communities. Toaddress this deÞciency, we used the Ant Leaf Litter protocol to survey ant diversity on the southern Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. We surveyed forested habitats on top of the plateau surface and on the cove slopes, as well as sites that were logged within the past 6 yr. After surveying 14 sites we found 1) 10,130 ants representing 55 species from 21 genera and six subfamilies, including Þve new records for Tennessee; 2) signiÞcant differences in ant communities by habitat type; 3) that southfacing cove slope ant communities more closely resembled the ant community of plateau surface native forest sites than the ant community of north-facing cove slopes; 4) that recently logged sites hosted a distinct ant community (including hybrid imported Þre ants) not found in undisturbed habitats; and 5) by resampling three sites surveyed 5 yr earlier, that the ant leaf litter protocol can be used to track ant community change over time. Ants thus proved to be an excellent system for examining invertebrate diversity across habitats on the Cumberland Plateau.