Xim Cerdá

Estación Biológica de Doñana · Ethology and Biodiversity Conservation

The Argentine ant is one of the five worst invasive ants. Recently it has been shown that one of the main compounds of its pygidial gland, iridomyrmecin, is used as a venom against competitors and enemies. Here, we explore the variability in the quantities of iridomyrmecin of individual workers, along a range of locations pertaining to both its nat...

Consistent variation in behavioural traits among individuals is common in many species and such variation has been documented along large-scale environmental gradients across the geographic ranges of several species. However, the effect of local environmental variation on the behaviour of subpopulations and the ecological impact of such variation r...

En el contexto de proyectos de investigación nacionales (Madrigal et al. 2022a) y el proyecto INTERREG POCTEPCILIFO (www.cilifo.eu), se ha abordado el reto de utilizar fuegos experimentalespara gestionar ecosistemas RN2000 reduciendo el peligro de incendios. En este capítulo se presentan los resultados de dos tipos de ecosistemas contrastados, uno...

En octubre de 2020 tuvieron lugar las primeras quemas prescritas experimentales con seguimiento científico en el Parque Nacional de Doñana en el contexto del proyecto INTERREG POCTEP CILIFO. El objetivo de esta experiencia fue explorar la potencialidad del uso del fuego como herramienta de restauración de los ecosistemas de matorral del interior de...

When studying forest disturbances, it is essential to examine biodiversity from different perspectives, which includes considering its taxonomic and functional facets. Indeed, different taxa may respond differently based on their functional traits. We analyzed the short-term effects of a wildfire on epigeic ant and spider communities in a Mediterra...

Temperature and competition are two of the main factors determining ant community assemblages. Temperature may allow species to forage more or less efficiently throughout the day (in accordance with the maximum activity temperature of each species). Competition can be observed and quantified from species replacements occurring during resource explo...

Aim Predictions of future species distributions rest on the assumption that climatic conditions in the current range reflect fundamental niche requirements. So far, it remains unclear to what extent this is true. We tested if three important factors determining fundamental niche—ecophysiology, morphology and evolutionary history—can predict the rea...

Cinco de las 100 especies más invasoras del planeta son hormigas e impactan a los ecosistemas de diversas maneras, por ejemplo: afectan poblaciones de vertebrados, reducen la diversidad de hormigas nativasy perturban mutualismos hormiga-planta. Uno de los numerosos roles que tienen las hormigas en los ecosistemas es la dispersión de semillas (mirme...

One of the main traits of invasive ants is the formation of supercolonies, large networks of polygynous nests lacking intraspecific competition, which allows them to reach high densities that facilitate their spread. However, different supercolonies exhibit different success in expanding along the world. Here, we explore whether the main chemical d...

Exploring shifts in the climatic niches of introduced species can provide significant insight into the mechanisms underlying the invasion process and the associated impacts on biodiversity. We aim to test the phylogenetic signal hypothesis in native and introduced species in Europe by examining climatic niche similarity. We examined data from 134 a...

Inclusive fitness theory predicts that the sex investment ratio should be female biased in social insects with haplodiploidy-generated relatedness asymmetry (between females and males and also among females). However, this ratio should become male biased if related females are competing with each other for resources, as it is predicted by local res...

The consequences of ant invasions on ecosystems may only become apparent after long periods. In addition, predicting how sensitive native fauna will respond is only possible if the underlying proximate mechanisms of their impact are identified. We studied the attraction of the native and invasive ant community to artificial bird nests. Further, we...

Invasive species have major impacts on biodiversity and are one of the primary causes of amphibian decline and extinction. Unlike other top ant invaders that negatively affect larger fauna via chemical defensive compounds, the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) does not have a functional sting. Nonetheless, it deploys defensive compounds against co...

Biotic homogenization—the erosion of biological differences among ecosystems due to human disturbance—is a pervasive threat to forest landscapes given the current global biodiversity crisis. In Mediterranean forests, wildfire is a particularly common disturbance that affects biodiversity at local, regional, and global scales. However, little is kno...

In ants, social thermal regulation is the collective maintenance of a nest temperature that is optimal for individual colony members. In the thermophilic ant Aphaenogaster iberica, two key behaviours regulate nest temperature: seasonal nest relocation and variable nest depth. Outside the nest, foragers must adapt their activity to avoid temperature...

In insects, cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles are complex phenotypic traits with several functions: they provide protection against pathogens and water loss and convey information about insect identity. They are particularly important in ants as they are the basis for colony-specific signatures, which allow nestmate recognition and thus help col...

The role of fire as a natural disturbance in Mediterranean ecosystems is well known. During the last decades fire regime and fire intensity have increased considerably in Mediterranean areas. Ant community changes due to fire are mainly caused by the indirect changes in habitat structure, microclimate, resource availability and competitive interact...

El papel del fuego como una perturbación natural en los ecosistemas mediterráneos es muy bien conocido. Durante las últimas décadas, el régimen y la intensidad de los incendios ha aumentado considerablemente en el área mediterránea. Los cambios en la comunidad de hormigas debidos al fuego son principalmente debidos a cambios indirectos en la estruc...

As global temperatures rise, the mechanistic links between temperature, physiology and behaviour will increasingly define predictions of ecological change. However, for many taxa, we currently lack consensus about how thermal performance traits vary within and across populations, and whether and how locally adaptive trait plasticity can buffer warm...

A pesar de que España es uno de los países con mayor diversidad de polinizadores silvestres y, que de su conservación depende el futuro de nuestros cultivos y por tanto de nuestra alimentación, lo cierto es que hoy día seguimos sin conocer el estado de conservación de gran parte de esta fauna, una demanda histórica de la sociedad cien- tífica que s...

In ant communities, species coexist by using different foraging strategies. We developed an adaptive dynamics model to gain a better understanding of the factors that promote the emergence and maintenance of strategy diversity. We analysed the consequences of both interspecific competition and resource distribution for the evolutionary dynamics of...

Stability of food-item dynamics. (PDF)

Fitting the model using field data. (PDF)

Ant queen pheromones (QPs) have long been known to affect colony functioning. In many species, QPs affect important reproductive functions such as diploid larvae sexualization and egg-laying by workers, unmated queens (gynes), or other queens. Until the 1990s, these effects were generally viewed to be the result of queen manipulation through the us...

Numerous observations and studies that have been carried out in recent decades show that, in addition to bees ((Hymenoptera; Anthophila), other groups of insects play a major role in entomophilous pollination. This article reviews the information and literature available on the contribution of the main groups of pollinators that traditionally have...

The relationship between levels of dominance and species richness is highly contentious, especially in ant communities. The dominance‐impoverishment rule states that high levels of dominance only occur in species‐poor communities, but there appear to be many cases of high levels of dominance in highly diverse communities. The extent to which domina...

Predator-prey interactions play a key role in the success and impacts of invasive species. However, the effects of invasive preys on native predators have been poorly studied. Here, we first reviewed hypotheses describing potential relationships between native predators and invasive preys. Second, we examined how an invasive prey, the Argentine ant...

Unlike natural selection, phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to respond quickly to changing environmental conditions. However, plasticity may not always be adaptive. In insects, body size and other morphological measurements have been shown to decrease as temperature increases. This relationship may lead to a physiological conflict in ants, whe...

Identifying the factors that promote the success of biological invasions is a key pursuit in ecology. To date, the link between animal personality and invasiveness has rarely been studied. Here, we examined in the laboratory how Argentine ant populations from the species’ native and introduced ranges differed in a suite of behaviours related to spe...

Although related, Cataglyphis floricola and Cataglyphis tartessica show very different responses to colony orphaning. In the laboratory, under queenless conditions, C. tartessica workers produced male offspring via arrhenotoky, while C. floricola workers produced female offspring, including new queens, via thelytoky. Both species have workers with...

What forces structure ecological assemblages? A key limitation to general insights about assemblage structure is the availability of data that are collected at a small spatial grain (local assemblages) and a large spatial extent (global coverage). Here, we present published and unpublished data from 51,388 ant abundance and occurrence records of mo...

There is a long tradition of community ecologists using interspecific dominance hierarchies as a way to explain species coexistence and community structure. However, there is considerable variation in the methods used to construct these hierarchies, how they are quantified, and how they are interpreted. In the study of ant communities, hierarchies...

In countries with high levels of urbanization, protected areas are often subject to human disturbance. In addition to dealing with fragmentation, land managers also have to confront the loss of characteristic ecosystems due to biotic homogenization, which is the increasing similarity of species assemblages among geographically separate regions. Usi...

Consistent individual differences in personality traits should be favoured when those traits contribute to consistent individual fitness differences. However, how variations in behaviours are related to productivity remains scarcely explored in social species, particularly in insects. Here, we investigated whether exploratory, boldness, and brood r...

1. In many ant species, caste differentiation stems from trophic differences at the larval stage. Adult workers that feed larvae have great control over the allocation of colony resources to growth (production of workers) versus reproduction (production of queens). However, larval caste fate may also be constrained very early on through direct gene...

Dataset used in the publication: Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities (Angulo, Boulay, Ruano, Tinaut, Cerdá) published in PeerJ (on-line free access) (see Table 1 in the paper to understand the abbreviations)

Caste determination in social insects has long been considered to exemplify socially mediated phenotypic plasticity: young larvae can develop into queens or workers depending on the social environment. However, recent studies have challenged this view by showing that, in some species, larval development can be biased early by factors such as larval...

Understanding how different biodiversity components are related across different environmental conditions is a major goal in macroecology and conservation biogeography. We investigated correlations among alpha and beta taxonomic (TD), phylogenetic (PD), and functional diversity (FD) in ant communities in the five biogeographic regions most represen...

Social insects have been particularly evolutionarily successful: they dominate terrestrial ecosystems all over the globe. Their success stems from their social organization, where one or a few individuals reproduce, whereas others carry out different colony tasks. From an evolutionary standpoint, social species are particularly interesting because...

The major factors explaining ecological variation in plants have been widely discussed over the last decade thanks to numerous studies that have examined the covariation that exists between pairs of traits. However, multivariate relationships among traits remain poorly characterized in animals. In this study, we aimed to identify the main multivari...

We analyze the relative contribution of environmental and spatial variables to the alpha and beta components of taxonomic (TD), phylogenetic (PD), and functional (FD) diversity in ant communities found along different climate and anthropogenic disturbance gradients across western and central Europe, in order to assess the mechanisms structuring ant...

Ants provide one of the best examples of the division of labour in animal societies. In many species, although workers still have ovaries, they refrain from laying (haploid) eggs when a queen is present in the colony and, instead, dedicate themselves exclusively to domestic tasks. In monogynous species, workers generally begin laying eggs once the...

How polygyny evolved in social insect societies is a long-standing question. This phenomenon, which is functionally similar to communal breeding in vertebrates, occurs when several queens come together in the same nest to lay eggs that are raised by workers. As a consequence, polygyny drastically reduces genetic relatedness among nestmates. It has...

1. Understanding species distributions and diversity gradients is a central challenge in ecology and requires prior knowledge of the functional traits mediating species’ survival under particular environmental conditions. While the functional ecology of plants has been reasonably well explored, much less is known about that of animals. Ants are amo...

Ants use many different chemical compounds to communicate with their nestmates. Foraging success depends on how efficiently ants communicate the presence of food and thus recruit workers to exploit the food resource. Trail pheromones, produced by different exocrine glands, are a key part of ant foraging strategies. By combing through the literature...

Gene flow is the main force opposing divergent selection, and its effects are greater in populations in close proximity. Thus, complete reproductive isolation between parapatric populations is not expected, particularly in the absence of ecological adaptation and sharp environmental differences. Here, we explore the biogeographical patterns of an e...

Gene flow is the main force opposing divergent selection and its effects are greater in populations in close proximity. Thus, complete reproductive isolation between parapatric populations is not expected, particularly in the absence of ecological adaptation and sharp environmental differences. Here we explore the biogeographic patterns of an endem...

Fire plays a key role in ecosystem dynamics worldwide, altering energy flows and species community structure and composition. However, the functional mechanisms underlying these effects are not well understood. Many ground-dwelling animal species can shelter themselves from exposure to heat and therefore rarely suffer direct mortality. However, fir...

Table S1. Composition of ant and Thorictus beetle cuticular hydrocarbons (means ± SE). Figure S1. Gas chromatograms of the CHCs of Cataglyphis hispanica and Thorictus sulcicollis. Peak numbers refer to the hydrocarbons described in Table S1. Figure S2. Gas chromatograms of the CHCs of Cataglyphis sp and Thorictus martinezi. Peak numbers refer to th...

Little is known about the impact of disturbances on functional diversity and the long-term provisioning of ecosystem services, especially in animals. In this work we analyze the effect of wildfire on the functional composition of Mediterranean ant communities. In particular, we asked whether a) fire changes functional composition (mean and dissimil...

SOSTENIBILIDAD EN ESPAÑA 2011 327 l Observatorio de la Sostenibilidad de España (OSE) ha preparado el presente capítulo espe-cial sobre bosques, en el marco de su Informe Sostenibilidad en España 2011, con ocasión de la celebración del Año Internacional de los Bosques. La Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas acordó en 2006 celebrar en 2011 este impo...

Appendix 1. Figure. Nest temperature and daily rhythms of ant activity in B (burnt) and UB (unburnt) plots for the five observation days.

Appendix 2. Table. Mean±SE seed density (seeds/m2) availability around Aphaenogaster gibbosa nests during this study.

FIGURE S1 - Plots showing the ants nests sampled starting from a larger (2009 and 2010 nest sampling) to a smaller scale (only 2010 sampling). The vertices indicate the measured plot area from where nests were sampled. Lines delimit different independent approximate transects to assess genetic divergence by distance (mantel tests) and the circle de...

Dispersal has consequences not only for individual fitness, but also for population dynamics, population genetics and species distribution. Social Hymenoptera show two contrasting colony reproductive strategies, dependent and independent colony foundation modes, and these are often associated to the population structures derived from inter and intr...

1. Fire greatly affects plant and animal biodiversity. There is an extensive body of literature on the effects of fire on insect communities, in which a large variability of responses has been observed. Very few studies, however, have addressed functional responses at the species level, information that would greatly enhance our understanding of th...

1. Mutualisms play a key part in ecological systems and drive the evolution of much of the world's biological diversity. Among them, myrmecochory, seed dispersal by ants, is a worldwide mechanism throughout many ecosystems. However, the classic representation of myrmechocory as a mutualism could be put into question if one of the two players did no...