Climate change is predicted to impact tropical rain forests, with droughts becoming more frequent and more severe in some regions. We currently have a poor understanding of how increased drought will change the functioning of tropical rain forest. In particular, tropical rain forest invertebrates, which are numerous and biologically important, may respond to drought in different ways across trophic levels. Ants are a diverse group that carry out important ecosystem processes, shaping ecosystem structure and function through predation and competition, which can influence multiple trophic levels. Hemiptera are a mega-diverse order, abundant in tropical rain forests and are ecologically important. To understand the roles of ants in exerting predation and competition pressure on invertebrates in tropical rain forests during drought and a post-drought period, we established a large-scale ecosystem manipulation experiment in Maliau Basin Conservation Area in Malaysian Borneo, suppressing the activity of ants on four 0.25 ha plots over a two-year period. We sampled hemipterans found in the leaf litter during a drought (July 2015) and a post-drought period (September 2016) period. We found significant shifts in the assemblage of hemipterans sampled from the leaf litter following ant suppression. Specifically, for ant-suppression plots, the species richness and abundance of herbivorous hemipterans increased only during the post-drought period. For predatory hemipterans, abundance increased with ant-suppression regardless of drought conditions, and we found marginal evidence for a species richness increase during the post-drought period with little or no change in the drought period. These results illustrate how ants in tropical forests structure invertebrate communities and how these effects may vary with climatic variation. Abstract in Malay is available with online material.

中文翻译：

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干旱和蚂蚁的存在会影响热带落叶中的半翅目

预计气候变化将影响热带雨林，一些地区的干旱变得更加频繁和更加严重。目前，我们对干旱加剧将如何改变热带雨林的功能知之甚少。特别是，热带雨林无脊椎动物数量众多且具有重要的生物学意义，它们可能会以不同的方式在不同的营养水平上对干旱做出反应。蚂蚁是一个多样化的群体，它们执行重要的生态系统过程，通过捕食和竞争塑造生态系统结构和功能，可以影响多个营养级别。半翅目是一个种类繁多的物种，在热带雨林中数量众多，具有重要的生态意义。为了了解蚂蚁在干旱和干旱后时期对热带雨林无脊椎动物施加捕食和竞争压力的作用，我们在马来西亚婆罗洲的马廖盆地保护区建立了大规模的生态系统操纵实验，抑制了蚂蚁的活动在两年期间的四个 0.25 公顷地块上。我们对干旱（2015 年 7 月）和干旱后（2016 年 9 月）期间落叶中发现的半翅目昆虫进行了采样。我们发现在蚂蚁抑制后从落叶中采样的半翅目动物的集合发生了显着变化。具体而言，对于蚂蚁抑制地块，草食性半翅目动物的物种丰富度和丰度仅在干旱后增加。对于掠食性半翅目动物，无论干旱条件如何，数量都会随着蚂蚁抑制而增加，我们发现了干旱后物种丰富度增加的边缘证据，而干旱时期几乎没有变化。这些结果说明了热带森林中的蚂蚁如何构建无脊椎动物群落，以及这些影响如何随气候变化而变化。马来文摘要可通过在线材料获得。