EstablishedColonies_9haPlot

X-Y locations of all established ant colonies found,i.e., the location of all myrmecophytic plants in a 9-ha study plot in the central Amazon and the identity of the ant resident

AlatesxSize

Data on the number of alate queens found in myrmecophytic plants of different sizes, where size is the number of domatia a plant has

Local Environmental Pollution Strongly Influences Culturable Bacterial Aerosols at an Urban Aquatic Superfund Site

In polluted environments, when microbial aerosols originate locally, species composition of the aerosols should reflect the polluted source. To test the connection between local environmental pollution and microbial aerosols near an urban waterfront, we characterized bacterial aerosols at Newtown Creek (NTC), a public waterway and Superfund site in a densely populated area of New York, NY, USA. Culturable bacterial aerosol fallout rate and surface water bacterial concentrations were at least an order of magnitude greater at NTC than at a neighboring, less polluted waterfront and a nonurban coastal site in Maine. The NTC culturable bacterial aerosol community was significantly different in taxonomic structure from previous urban and coastal aerosol studies, particularly in relative abundances of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. Twenty-four percent of the operational taxonomic units in the NTC overall (air + water) bacterial isolate library were most similar to bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences previously described in terrestrial or aquatic environments contaminated with sewage, hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and other industrial waste. This study is the first to examine the community composition and local deposition of bacterial aerosols from an aquatic Superfund site. The findings have important implications for the use of aeration remediation in polluted aquatic environments and suggest a novel pathway of microbial exposure in densely populated urban communities containing contaminated soil and water

Dispersal kernels for three species of Amazonian plant-ants.

<p>Dispersal kernels (i.e., probability density functions describing the spatial redistribution of queens around reproductive colonies) for ant queens obligately nesting in <i>Tococa bullifera</i> or <i>Maieta guianensis</i>. These kernels are scaled for a colony housed in a plant of the median size observed in our 9-ha study plot.</p

Focal community of ant-plant mutualists.

<p>Graphical depiction of the Amazonian plant-ant community used to quantify dispersal capability of ant queens. Values by arrows are the percentage of host-plants colonized by each species of ant in our 9-ha study site.</p

Distance from colonized seedlings to the nearest reproductive ant colony.

<p>Histograms of the pairwise distances from each colonized trap plant to the nearest reproductive colony of the ant species that colonized it. A) <i>Pheidole minutula</i>: mean pairwise distance = 10.91 m±5.26 SD, B) <i>Crematogaster laevis</i>: mean pairwise distance = 37.49 m±25.92 SD, C) <i>Azteca</i> sp.: mean pairwise distance = 12.30 m±6.53 SD.</p

Result of Steel's Test comparing the median distance of colonized trap plants to the nearest reproductive colony for all pairwise comparisons of ant species.

<p>Result of Steel's Test comparing the median distance of colonized trap plants to the nearest reproductive colony for all pairwise comparisons of ant species.</p

Maximum-likelihood parameter estimates (MLE) and 95% support intervals (SI) for inverse models estimating the dispersal kernels of three mutualist ant species nesting in two species of Amazonian ant-plants.

1<p>Parameters: <i>X₀</i> = Mode of the log-normal dispersal kernel, <i>X_b</i> = Variance of the log-normal dispersal kernel, <i>a</i> = Slope of the line describing the relationship between plant size and queen production, <i>b</i> = Intercept of the relationship between plant size and queen production.</p

Map of established ant colonies and target seedlings.

<p>Location and size of plants hosting colonies of <i>Azteca</i> sp., <i>Crematogaster laevis</i>, and <i>Pheidole minutula</i> and the location of experimentally planted seedlings (“trap plants”) of <i>Maieta guianensis</i> and <i>Tococa bullifera</i>.</p

Nested Analysis of Variance comparing the average distance of trap plants to colonies of the three ant species (<i>Crematogaster laevis</i>, <i>Azteca</i> sp., <i>Pheidole minutula</i>) mapped in our 9 ha study site.

<p>(Nested ANOVA; Main effect of Ant species: F_2,16694 = 169.68, P = <0.0001).</p