Response of ants to disturbance gradients in and around Bangalore, India.

There is an emphasis the world over to build back biodiversity even in humandominated landscapes, such as cityscapes. Birds and butterflies that are highly vagile have been studied extensively, but less mobile taxa such as ants have been ignored, for this reason we chose them as the study taxa for this work. The distribution and abundance of ant species across a disturbance gradient in and around Bangalore city was studied. Five sites were sampled and these represented a gradient of urban land use that ranged from highly disturbed to comparatively less disturbed areas. A total of 51 species of ants belonging to seven subfamilies were recorded. Ant species richness and abundance was higher in the disturbed site. Species richness is significantly correlated with litter and canopy cover. Common species increased with disturbance. Disturbed sites supported rare species, suggesting that these habitats located in urban settings also require protection. The management implications of the results are discussed.