Removing understory vegetation in oil palm agroforestry reduces ground foraging ant abundance but not species richness

Ants are known to provide valuable ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes, including oil palm plantations. Their communities are less diverse and more uneven in oil palm compared with forest, and this may increase their vulnerability to disturbance. This study quantifies ant communities in oil palm agroforestry and experimentally tests their robustness to a common-practice high-disturbance management intervention: removing understory vegetation.Fieldwork was based at the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Understory Vegetation Project in Sumatra, Indonesia, where three treatments varying in their degree of understory vegetation management were established in 2014: (1) widespread herbicide was applied removing all understory vegetation (Reduced); (2) herbicide was applied to the harvesting paths and circles, and other vegetation was allowed to grow (Normal …