Combined effects of the landscape and crop management on ant communities

Agricultural expansion promotes profound changes in natural landscapes that affect biodiversity and agroecosystem functioning. Although agricultural management and landscape context are recognized as key drivers shaping the structure and composition of biological communities, how these filters interact to shape soil fauna remains poorly understood.

In this study, we evaluated the combined effects of the landscape (predominantly agricultural or forest) and management type (conventional or organic) on the richness, frequency of occurrence and species composition of ant assemblages in vegetable crops in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

We sampled 12 agricultural properties distributed in four combined treatments, with the surrounding landscape of each property characterized by 500 m buffers using satellite images. We recorded 157 ant species distributed in 43 genera and 9 subfamilies.

The richness and frequency of occurrence did not differ between the landscape or management types, nor did we detect an interactive effect, indicating a predominance of generalist species in the agricultural systems evaluated. In contrast, the composition of the communities responded significantly to management types, with a clear distinction between conventionally and organically managed crops; however, the landscape exerted limited influence.

Most of the species were classified as generalists, and only a few showed specific associations with determined treatments. Our results indicate that, at small spatial scales, agricultural management acts as a stronger ecological filter than landscape context, highlighting the importance of agricultural practices that promote greater environmental heterogeneity and less soil disturbance to conserve the soil fauna.