The Ants Of Foping National Nature Reserve

Ants are the important continent species in the world. For its numerousspecies, large individual numbers and huge distribution range, ants are the dominantpopulation in forest ecology system. By the reason of this, ants are considered as animportant member of the ecology system, as well as the indicator of biodiversity andecology system. Foping National Nature Reserve, which is in the Qinling Mountains,and with mild climate and plenty biology resource, is an important distribution area ofPanda, Golden Monkey and Takin which are First-grade State protection in China. Sofar, the investigation of the vegetations in the reserve is completely finished (Ren Yi,1998), while few works on the insects is carried on. As a giant habitat of panda, theinvestigation of the ecology and environment in this area must be more important. Thus,the study on the ants, which is in the different type of vegetations, in Foping NationalNature Reserve should be taken.In this investigation for the ants in Foping National Nature Reserve, 9944 antsspecimen are collected. Four Subfamilies, 30 Genera and 55 species are identified. In allof these species, four are new species, the other four ones are new record in China, andfive species are remained. Those four new species are: Myrmica panda sp. nov.,Strongylognathus fopingensis sp. nov., Myrmecina hamula sp. nov. and Stenammasinensis sp. nov.. And those four Chinese new record species are: Myrmica scabrinodiseidmanni Menozzi, Myrmica kozlovi Ruzsky, Temnothorax tuberum (Fabricius) andTemnothorax werneri (Radchenko).The faunistic analysis in this area shows that the biogeographic components of theants genera are complicated, and most faunistic components are exist simultaneously:eight ones are World Wide distribution genera, accounted for 26.7% of total species;five are Tropical and Subtropical distribution genera, accounted for 16.7% of totalspecies; three genera belong to Old World Tropical, Subtropical and Temperate,accounted for 10%; eight ones belong to both Holarctic and Oriental, accounted for26.7%, and six genera are endemics of other different regions, accounted for 20%. Thesame to the genus component, numerous fauna of ants simultaneously exist as well:Cosmopolitan species are the most ones, contained 23 species, accounted for 41%; theOriental species are 18 ones, accounted for 32%; ones mainly belong to Palaearctic arenine, accounted for 16%. And five are not identified and the fauna to which they belongis unknown.In their vertical distribution, Oriental species and Cosmopolitan species are mainlydistributed in the lower and middle elevation in this area and the distribution range ofthe most of these species is always below to 1700m, just the following species of thisgroup are collected in the higher range: Ponera nangongshana, Lasius aliennus,Paratrechina flavipes, Formica cunicularia and Formica fusca. According to the research of the vegetation in Foping National Nature Reservetaken by Prof. Ren Yi (1998), the vegetation in this area is divided into 17 subtypes, andthe 10 important ones of them are discussed in this article. The following conclusioncan be drawn:1) The analysis of species biodiversity in different vegetation subtypes shows thatnumerous species are found in the Oak forest subtype which possesses well livingcondition, the richness of ants here is the highest of all the subtypes in this area, thevalue reached to 1.76; the following vegetation subtypes are lower than the former, andtheir values are from 1.10 to 1.47: Temperate bamboo forest, Form. Tsuga chinesisconiferous-broadleaved mixed forest, Poplar and Birch forest and Temperate evergreenconiferous forest. The richness of Deciduous broad-leaved mixed forest, Cool-temperateevergreen coniferous forest and Deciduous broad-leaved mixed forest are very lowerand similar to each other, their values are from 0.70 to 0.84; ones with lowest richnessare Shrubs and Meadow, and only two ant species are collected in these areas.2) The conclusion can be drawn from the analysis of the species biodiversitychanged by the increasing altitude grads: the ant species biodiversity would drop whilealtitude increasing and the highest richness of ants in this reserve is the range of 1550mand 1750m.3) The analysis of species biodiversity in different exposure shows: the ant richnessin sunny slope are the highest of all, reached to 2.0; the middle one is in thehalf-north-facing and half-south-facing slope, the value is 1.7; and the lowest one is innorth-facing slope.This research discovers new ant species, completes the ant species catalogue inFoping National Nature Reserve and analyzes the components of the ant fauna in thisarea, and studies the regular way of the ant distribution. All of these conclusions arecontribute to the ant fauna studying in China and the world as well, the identification ofant species in this area, and the manage of this nature reserve.The Holotype of the new species described in this thesis is deposited in Institute ofZoology, Shaanxi Normal University.