Direct and indirect effects of land-use intensification on ant communities in temperate grasslands.

摘要: Land‐use intensification is a major driver of local species extinction and homogenization. Temperate grasslands, managed at low intensities over centuries harbored high diversity, which increasingly threatened by the management last decades. This includes key taxa like ants. However, underlying mechanisms leading to decrease in ant abundance richness as well changes functional community composition are not understood. We sampled ants on 110 grassland plots three regions Germany. The grasslands used meadows or pastures, being mown, grazed fertilized different intensities. analyzed effect aspects land use richness, trait spaces, using multimodel inference approach structural equation models. Overall, we found 31 belonging 8 genera, mostly open habitat specialists. Ant space communities, nests decreased with increasing land‐use intensity. practice most harmful was mowing, followed heavy grazing cattle. Fertilization did strongly affect richness. Grazing sheep increased mowing differed between negative for Formica while Myrmica common Lasius were less affected. Rare occurred mainly Our results show that often later season would retain higher richness—similarly other taxa. transformation from (sheep) pastures intensively especially directly affects via destruction indirectly loss heterogeneity (reduced plant richness) soil moisture shading fast‐growing species.