Mark K L Wong

University of Western Australia | UWA · School of Biological Sciences

In focusing on how organisms' generalizable functional properties (traits) interact mechanistically with environments across spatial scales and levels of biological organization, trait‐based approaches provide a powerful framework for attaining synthesis, generality and prediction. Trait‐based research has considerably improved understanding of the...

The assumption that differences in species' traits reflect their different niches has long influenced how ecologists infer processes from assemblage patterns. For instance, many assess the importance of environmental filtering versus classical limiting-similarity competition in driving biological invasions by examining whether invaders' traits are...

Knowledge on the distribution and abundance of organisms is fundamental to understanding their roles within ecosystems and their ecological importance for other taxa. Such knowledge is currently lacking for insects, which have long been regarded as the “little things that run the world”. Even for ubiquitous insects, such as ants, which are of treme...

Many alien species are neither cultivated nor traded but spread unintentionally, and their global movements, capacities to invade ecosystems, and susceptibility to detection by biosecurity measures are poorly known. We addressed these key knowledge gaps for ants, a ubiquitous group of stowaway and contaminant organisms that include some of the worl...

Insects sustain key ecosystem functions, but how their activity varies across the day–night cycle and the underlying drivers are poorly understood. Although entomologists generally expect that more insects are active at night, this notion has not been tested with empirical data at the global scale. Here, we assemble 331 quantitative comparisons of...

Human pressures, particularly urbanisation and agricultural expansion, profoundly affect biodiversity by reshaping species and functional trait distributions, with critical consequences for ecosystem resilience and multifunctionality. Yet, the extent and strength of these impacts across diverse taxa and ecosystems remain poorly understood. Here, we...

News on invasive species featuring images of the wrong organisms may erode trust in conservation efforts and cause unnecessary public alarm.

In mainstream media, news outlets play a vital role in raising awareness and rallying public support for managing invasive species. However, news reports on invasive species occasionally feature misleading images of unrelated organisms. In this correspondence, I illustrate the problem with recent international news reports on invasions by Red Impor...

Insect activity powers ecosystems and food production globally. Although insect activity is known to vary with the rise and setting of the sun, there is surprisingly limited empirical information on how insect abundance and richness varies across the 24-hour day–night (diel) cycle. Moreover, commonly used methods for sampling insects such as light...

The writings of naturalists from two centuries past are brimming with accounts of the stark differences in the kinds and numbers of organisms encountered during the day and night and between the tropical and temperate zones. However, only recently have ecologists begun to systematically describe and explain the geographic variation in the diel acti...

The genus Leptanilla Emery, 1870 of the family Formicidae, subfamily Leptanillinae, comprises miniscule, pale, blind ants that are rarely collected and poorly understood due to their hypogaeic (i.e. underground) lifestyles. Here we describe a new Leptanilla species from two workers collected via subterranean scraping in the arid Pilbara region of W...

Early naturalists such as Humboldt observed that changes in topography and anthropogenic disturbances influenced vegetation structure and the composition of animal communities. This holistic view of community assembly continues to shape conservation and restoration strategies in an era of landscape degradation and biodiversity loss. Today, remote s...

Human impacts such as habitat loss, climate change and biological invasions are radically altering biodiversity, with greater effects projected into the future. Evidence suggests human impacts may differ substantially between terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, but the reasons for these differences are poorly understood. We propose an integrativ...

Human impacts such as habitat loss, climate change and biological invasions are radically altering biodiversity, with even greater effects projected into the future. Evidence suggests human impacts may differ substantially between terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, but the reasons for these differences are poorly understood. We propose an integ...

Despite a legacy of extensive deforestation, the 720 km2 city state of Singapore still harbours impressively diverse flora and fauna. Given increasing evidence of global insect declines, we urgently need to better document and protect local insect diversity. Numerous species of ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) have been recorded or described from Sin...

The ecological and economic impacts of biological invasions are usually highly conspicuous, but these are the outcome of a global, multistage process that is obscured from view. For most taxa, we lack a large-scale picture of the movements of alien species, the biases and filters that promote or inhibit their spread at each stage, and blind spots i...

Functional diversity assessments are crucial and increasingly used for understanding ecological processes and managing ecosystems. The functional diversity of a community is assessed by sampling traits at one or more scales (individuals, populations and species) and calculating a summary index of the variation in trait values. However, it remains u...

Insight into how species' phenotypic differences shape coexistence is key to understanding the processes structuring, maintaining and threatening biodiversity. In line with modern coexistence theory, increasing studies on plants show that traits may not only confer niche differences fostering the coexistence of dissimilar species, but also competit...

Interspecific competition, a dominant process structuring ecological communities, is influenced by species' phenotypic differences. Limiting similarity theory holds that species with similar traits should compete intensely (‘trait‐similarity'). In contrast, competing theories including modern coexistence theory emphasize that species with traits co...

Functional diversity assessments are crucial and increasingly used for understanding ecological processes and managing ecosystems. The functional diversity of a community is assessed by sampling traits at one or more scales (individuals, populations, species) and calculating a summary index of the variation in trait values. However, it remains uncl...

Working definitions and brief accounts on the ecology, evolution and diversity of subterranean ants, an exciting frontier in myrmecology.

Interspecific competition, a dominant process structuring ecological communities, acts on species' phenotypic differences. Species with similar traits should compete intensely (trait-similarity), while those with traits that confer competitive ability should outcompete others (trait-hierarchy). Either or both of these mechanisms may drive competiti...

The diversity and distribution of traits in an ecological community shapes its responses to change and the ecosystem processes it modulates. This ‘functional diversity’, however, is not necessarily a direct outcome of taxonomic diversity. Invasions by exotic insects occur in ecosystems worldwide, but there is limited understanding of how they impac...

*** UPDATE: This preprint was later revised, peer-reviewed, and published in Oikos; please refer the updated version: Wong MKL, Guénard B & Lewis OT. 2020. The cryptic impacts of invasion: functional homogenization of tropical ant communities by invasive fire ants. Oikos. doi: 10.1111/oik.06870 ******************************************************...

This original preprint (dated 13 Jun 2018) was later peer-reviewed and published in Biological Reviews on 13 Dec 2018. Please refer to the final peer-reviewed and published article (Open Access) at this link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12488 .....................................................................................

In focusing on how organisms’ generalizable functional properties (traits) mechanistically interact with environments across spatial scales and levels of biological organization, trait-based approaches provide a powerful framework for attaining synthesis, generality and prediction. Trait-based research has considerably improved understanding of the...

A preliminary checklist is provided for the ant genera of Pulau Ubin, the second largest offshore island of Singapore. Thirty-five genera representing seven subfamilies were collected on the island using rapid opportunistic hand sampling. This unexpected diversity on an island may reflect the high ant diversity in the tropics in general. The sample...

Speciation involves divergence at genetic and phenotypic levels. Where substantial genetic differentiation exists among populations, examining variation in multiple phenotypic characters may elucidate the mechanisms by which divergence and speciation unfold. Previous work on the Australian funnel-web spider Atrax sutherlandi Gray (2010; Records of...

Soil organisms represent a key component of most ecosystems, and their study must rely on efficient and standardized methods. In ants, subterranean assemblages are perceived as distinct from those of other strata (e.g., ground surface or canopy ants) and as such deserve particular attention – the value of which has recently been acknowledged in res...

The rare myrmicine ant genus Tyrannomyrmex Fernández, 2003 comprises three species of tropical ants restricted to the Oriental region. This study presents information on worker size, specific habitat, food and behaviour of Tyrannomyrmex rex.

We present the first confirmed record of the little known and uncommon ant genus Myrmecina for the Malay Peninsula. Myrmecina magnificens sp. n., a new species displaying unique anteriorly pointing pro-podeal spines, is described from specimens of the worker caste collected in a selectively logged primary rainforest in Singapore. We also provide th...

Temporal variation in the venom yield of spiders is a relatively poorly understood phenomenon. We investigated temporal variation in venom yield of the Australian funnel-web spider Atrax sutherlandi Gray 2010 (Hexathelidae: Atracinae). The venom yield of spiders collected and milked in winter was 62.9% higher than those collected and milked in autu...

A new species of the army ant genus Aenictus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Dorylinae) is described. Aenictus seletarius sp. nov., belonging to the Aenictus minutulus species group, was discovered from a single subterranean pitfall trap in Singapore. Like A. subterraneus and A. changmaianus in this species group, A. seletarius displays substantial varia...

A new species of the cryptic and rarely collected ant genus Leptanilla is described. Leptanilla hypodracos sp. n. is the first Leptanilla recorded from Singapore in over a century since L. havilandi Forel, 1901 and represents the fourth species of Leptanilla known from the Malay Peninsula. An updated key to the Leptanilla of the Oriental region is...