Ant Community Structure and Related Environmental Factors after Line Thinning in Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) Plantations

Abstract

In order to understand the effects of line thinning on forest biota, we compared ant community structure between the line thinned and an adjacent control stand in two Japanese cedar plantations in Hyogo Prefecture. The stand, which was heavily thinned 11 years ago, tended to have more woodland specialists and less habitat generalists compared with the control plot. In the stand, which was lightly thinned four years ago, the opposite trend was observed. The effect of environmental factors on ant species composition was not clear, but there were some effects of the amount of incident light to the forest floor and the biomass of understory vegetation. Our results indicate that more investigation is needed in order to use ant species composition as an indicator of the degree of disturbance and subsequent recovery of forest biota after forest management practices.