Diversity of ant community in ore sedimentation basin under different regimes of reclamation

Post-industrial sites form a unique phenomenon in the landscape. They enable us to study the human-altered succession of communities. Regarding this, we studied an ant community in three types of habitats - reclamation and spontaneous succession in an ore basin together with unaltered surroundings in the Czech Republic. More than 30 years after being abandoned, the site with spontaneous succession was more species rich than the reclaimed one. Moreover, spontaneous succession created a habitat that was more similar regarding ant diversity to the unaltered surrounding environment than that after traditional reclamation. Ants dependent on tree vegetation were rather rare in both the reclaimed and spontaneous succession parts of the ore basin compared to the surrounding landscape. The relative abundance of socially parasitic ants increases in a gradient from the reclaimed basin, through the basin with spontaneous succession to the unaltered surroundings. Our study highlighted the fact that the formation of ant communities at post-industrial sites is clearly more complicated than for other arthropods, including related aculeate hymenopterans. The potential of both reclaimed and spontaneous succession basins for harbouring endangered species appeared to be lower for ants than for other taxa indicated by recent studies.