Ant Fauna and Species Diversity of Mt. Gaoligong, Yunnan Province

Mt. Gaoligong is located at the most west of the Hengduan Mountains and became a transition zone between Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Hengduan Mountains. Because connecting 3 biodiversity hotspots namely eastern Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains and India-Myanmar, Mt. Gaoligong has highly enriched organism species, therefore became a world biosphere reserve and an international meaning key area of land biodiversity. In order to completely reveal the ant fauna and species diversity of Mt. Gaoligong, the errors in the former reports were revised in this study and a systematic investigation was conducted from 2019 to 2021. At last, 9 subfamilies, 67 genera and 245 known species of ants were recorded, extra 19 genera(occupying 28.4%) and 124 species(occupying 50.6%) were supplemented comparing to predecessors' surveys. The ant fauna of Mt. Gaoligong has a typical gathering character of the ant fauna of eastern Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains and India-Myanmar, although a few Palearctic elements penetrated the mountain top in the north section, but massive community was not formed, therefore the range of Mt. Gaoligong from Longling to Gongshan should be included into Southwest China Zone in Oriental Region in China zoogeographical division. At genera level, the relationship with other zoogeographical regions is successively Palearctic, Australian, Afrotropical, Neotropical and Nearctic. At species level, the relationship with other zoogeographical regions is successively Palearctic, Australian, Afrotropical, Nearctic and Neotropical, the relationship with other zones is successively South China, Central China, North China, Qinghai-Tibet, Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang and Northeast China. Ant species diversity increases with latitude decreasing and air temperature increasing from north to south. Ant species diversity on the east slope is higher than those on the west slope because effective accumulative temperature on the east slope is higher than those on the west slope. Ant individual density is mainly influenced by humidity because appropriate humidity is helpful for increasing individual density of ant community. Ant species diversity was reduced by human disturbance outside the nature reserve. It is concluded that ant species diversity of Mt. Gaoligong is mainly controlled by air temperature, humidity, slope direction and human disturbance.