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| Many studies have focused on the impacts of climate
change on biological assemblages, yet little is known
about howclimate interacts with other major anthropogenic
influences on biodiversity, such as habitat disturbance.
Using a unique global database of 1128 local ant assemblages,
we examined whether climate mediates the effects
of habitat disturbance on assemblage structure at a global
scale. Species richness and evenness were associated positively
with temperature, and negatively with disturbance.
However, the interaction among temperature, precipitation
and disturbance shaped species richness and evenness. The
effectwas manifested through a failure of species richness to
increase substantially with temperature in transformed
habitats at low precipitation. At low precipitation levels,
evenness increased with temperature in undisturbed sites,
peaked at medium temperatures in disturbed sites and
remained low in transformed sites. In warmer climates
with lower rainfall, the effects of increasing disturbance
on species richness and evenness were akin to decreases
in temperature of up to 98C. Anthropogenic disturbance
and ongoing climate change may interact in complicated
ways to shape the structure of assemblages, with hot, arid
environments likely to be at greatest risk. | |
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