NEONAnts: Spatial and temporal dynamics of North American ant assemblages

The NEONAnts project is currently resampling ant assemblages across North America that we originally sampled in 1994-1995. Our aim is to help jump-start NEON’s goals with an array of 20-year community trajectories for a dominant animal clade. Our specific goals are to: 1) test hypotheses relating thermal tolerance of ants to climate and biogeochemistry; 2) measure community trajectories to changing gradients of temperature, precipitation and seasonality; and 3) develop models that integrate weather, climate and thermal tolerance to predict temporal and spatial patterns of ant activity, and evaluate them using bycatch from NEON pitfall traps.