A rapid survey of ground-dwelling ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in an urban park from state of Paulo, Brazil

aCoordenação de Ciências da Terra e Ecologia, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi – MPEG, Av. Perimetral, 1901, CEP 66077-830, Belém, Pará, Brasil bDepartamento de Ciências da Natureza, Matemática e Educação, Centro de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar, Rodovia Anhanguera, Km 174, CP 153, CEP 13600-970, Araras, SP, Brasil cNúcleo de Ciências Ambientais, Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes UMC, Av. Cândido Xavier Almeida e Souza, 200, CEP 08780-911, Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo, Brasil

The growing urbanization process has led to significant changes in natural environments (Kamura et al., 2007;Guimarães et al., 2013). Thus, it becomes necessary to search for alternatives aiming at conservation and improvement in environmental quality. The creation of forest reserves and ecological parks in urban regions (Kowarik, 2011) can be an effective strategy to conserve biodiversity. The maintenance of these areas benefits many organisms, mainly by providing refuges for many animal species, including ants (Souza-Campana et al., 2016).
Ants play a key role in different ecosystems, acting in nutrient cycling (Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990), soil structuring, and interacting with other organisms (Folgarait, 1998;Sanders and Van Veen, 2011). Due to their high diversity, wide world distribution, and sensitivity to environmental changes, they are important organisms for biodiversity studies (Alonso and Agosti, 2000). Here, we describe a rapid survey of ground-dwelling ants.
The area comprises a fragment of Atlantic Forest of 48.4 hectares located on the urban perimeter of Águas da Prata, state of São Paulo, Brazil (21° 55'S; 46°42'W). It is influenced by the proximity to the Governador Adhemar Pereira de Barros Highway (SP-342) and by trails accessed by visitors.
Ants were collected once in June 2016 (dry season), along a 400m transect (into the fragment), within the fragment of about 100 m from the border region. In total, 20 sample points 20 m distance were evaluated. At each point, we collected two samples of 1 m 2 leaf litter, one to the left and one to the right of the transect, 20 m apart. Each sample was submitted to a mini-Winkler extractor for 48 hours. The ground-dwelling ants were identified following taxonomic key from Baccaro et al. (2015), and had their species/morphospecies named according to Suguituru et al. (2015). Voucher specimens were deposited at Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes, in São Paulo, Brazil.
We collected a total of 6,361 ants with representatives of six subfamilies, 19 genera, and 24 species/morphospecies ( Table 1). The taxa are characteristic of the litter stratum (Delabie et al., 2000) and represent a mosaic composed of species found in forests and urban environments.
Data on ant diversity in fragments and urban parks of São Paulo State have been described by Morini et al. (2007), Souza et al. (2012a, b), Tachira et al. (2012), and Souza-Campana et al. (2016). Although further research is necessary to ensure that the ant fauna is sufficiently represented, this rapid assessment provides information about ants living in the leaf litter of the Águas da Prata State Park, improving data for the region. In addition, information will be important for monitoring these populations over time, thus contribution in decision-making for biodiversity conservation programs.