ANTS INHABITING CUBITERMES TERMITARIES IN AFRICAN RAIN-FORESTS

We hypothetized that termitaries of Cubitermes with their alveolate st ructure might constitute good shelters for ant colonies. We tested thi s hypothesis in 10 forests of southern Cameroon where we assessed a de nsity of 124.48 +/- 13.6 Cubitermes fungifaber and C. banksi termitari es (both active and abandoned) per ha. Our work was undertaken on 725 termitaries among which we distinguished three groups: active, vertica l (358); abandoned, vertical (220); and fallen abandoned (147). The ra te of termitaries sheltering ant societies is higher for those which a re abandoned (92.5% for fallen ones; 83.6% for vertical ones) than for chose which are active (43.8%). We recorded 799 ant societies belongi ng to 37 genera and 151 species, of which 11 are undescribed. We found up to six ant colonies per termitary. These termitaries, which are fr equent in the understory, thus proved to be good shelters for ant soci eties. Moreover, this represents one of the highest levels of diversit y of ants ever recorded, although these termitaries correspond to a li mited area in comparison co that represented by the soil and leaf litt er, rotten wood lying on the ground, or trees trunks and canopy. These results imply that in the rain forest the scarcity of nesting sites i s one of the principal factors limiting the populations of ground-dwel ling ants. The termitaries sampled also sheltered 103 incipient ant co lonies (12.9% of the total number of societies) which belong principal ly to the Formicinae (71.7% of the societies of Formicinae recorded we re incipient; 4.3% for the Ponerinae; 5.9% for the Myrmicinae and 0% f or the Cerapachyinae and the Dolichoderinae). Depending on the subfami ly, the Cubitennes termitaries are used as shelter only during foundat ion (Formicinae) or during che entire life cycle (ocher subfamilies).