Functional and phylogenetic responses of arboreal ants to land use change in Neotropical savannas

Anthropogenic land use is devastating natural ecosystems on a global scale, impacting not only taxonomic diversity but also the functional roles of species, their ecological interactions and their evolutionary relationships. These impacts vary in intensity and magnitude across taxa and land use types. In the Neotropical savanna, although arboreal ants exhibit high diversity and play essential ecological roles through interactions with plants and insects, little is still known about how these communities respond to land use changes To address this gap, we investigated the effects of anthropogenic modification on the functional and phylogenetic diversity of arboreal ants in the Brazilian Cerrado, an extremely diverse and highly threatened savanna. We sampled ants in 14 remnants located in preserved (open and closed cerrado), rural and urban landscapes. We found a multifaceted relationship between habitat modification and community diversity. Open cerrado exhibited reduced functional diversity, while both open cerrado and urban areas showed low functional evenness, suggesting limited resource partitioning and reduced ecological resilience. Meanwhile, rural environments exhibited lower phylogenetic diversity. Analyses of morphological traits revealed differences between habitats, but these differences disappeared when weighted by abundance, indicating that the dominance of generalist species homogenizes functional structure. Individual traits also varied: ants from closed cerrado had smaller mandibles and scapes, while those from urban areas exhibited shorter legs. Our study highlights the differentiated effects of human activity on the functional and phylogenetic diversity of arboreal ants, revealing the complex interactions between land modification and the environmental structure of affected habitats.