Further details are provided in Ewers et al. (2011). We used survey points established as part of a large-scale, long-term experiment investigating the effects of Selleck EPZ015666 forest fragmentation: the “Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) Project” (Ewers et al. 2011). Fifty-nine survey points were sampled in our study: 18 in old growth forest, 32 in logged forest of varying forest quality, and nine in oil
palm plantation (Online Resource, Fig. S1). A larger number of survey points were sampled in logged forest and old growth forest because we expected these habitats to be more heterogeneous SB525334 ic50 and we wanted our points to span a gradient of habitat disturbance across all the habitats. Neighbouring survey points were 178 m apart. Selection of these survey points was made with future repeat-surveys in mind once
clearance of logged forest for oil palm plantation has resulted in the creation of forest fragments. There are no areas of continuous, unfragmented old growth forest near to the SAFE project sites and hence the study design does not allow separation of the effects of location from those of habitat disturbance. We are therefore cautious in our interpretation of the results, particularly about assigning causal relationships between treatments and assemblage composition. Ant and termite collection Survey work was conducted in April and May 2010 during the dry season, Selleckchem NVP-HSP990 between 0800 h and 1700 h. This coincided with the end of an El Nino-related drought between February and April that year (see http://www.searrp.org/danum-valley/the-conservation-area/climate/).
None of the sites was affected by fire during the drought period, however. At each survey point a 4 × 4 m2 quadrat was placed, with sixteen soil pits dug Idoxuridine (1,131 cm3 per pit: 12 cm diameter by 10 cm deep) centred within each square metre of the quadrat. Soil was removed from each pit and hand-searched for ants and termites using a white tray for 10 person-minutes. Large dead wood (diam > 5 cm) within the quadrat (up to a height of 2 m) was also searched for ants and termites, once per metre of dead wood (following Davies et al. 2003). Bark was removed and holes in the wood were examined. These methods only sample the fauna living within the soil and dead wood, and do not sample the leaf litter community. Ants and termites were sorted to genus using the collections of the Natural History Museum, London, and relevant literature (Ahmed and Akhtar 1981; Tho and Kirton 1992; Bolton 1994; Gathorne-Hardy 2001; Hashimoto 2003). Ant and termite reproductives were excluded from counts to avoid including vagrants, and immature termites could not be identified. Ants and termites show niche conservatism within genera (Andersen 2000; Donovan et al. 2001) and so genus-level identification of both taxa was suitable for functional group assignment.