New Harvard Forest Publication: Fire Impact on Ant Communities

Harvard Forest Senior Research Fellow Aaron Ellison and colleagues at the University of Tennessee, University of Vermont, and Humbold State University examined patterns of co-occurrence of ant species in forests and wetlands in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon and California that were burned by the Biscuit Fire in 2001. They found that the "assembly rules" acting on these ant communities varied with scale and across years, but there were no long-lasting effects of this large fire.

Sanders, N. J., N. J. Gotelli, S. E. Wittman, J. S. Ratchford, A. M. Ellison, and E. S. Jules. 2007. Assembly rules of ground-foraging ant assemblages are contingent on disturbance, habitat, and spatial scale. Journal of Biogeography 34: 1632-1641.