The tropical fire ant Solenopsis geminata (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is a serious invasive species that causes a decline in agricultural production, damages infrastructure, and harms human health. This study was aimed to develop a model using the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) algorithm to predict the current and future distribution of S. geminata on a global scale for effective monitoring and management. In total, 669 occurrence sites of S. geminata and six bioclimatic variables of current and future climate change scenarios for 2050 and 2100 were used for the modeling. The annual mean temperature, annual precipitation, and precipitation in the driest quarter were the key influential factors for determining the distribution of S. geminata. Although the potential global distribution area of S. geminata is predicted to decrease slightly under global warming, the distribution of favorable habitats is predicted to expand to high latitudes under climate scenarios. In addition, some countries in America and East Asia, such as Brazil, China, South Korea, the USA, and Uruguay, are predicted to be threatened by S. geminata invasion under future climate change. These findings can facilitate the proactive management of S. geminata through monitoring, surveillance, and quarantine measures.

Urbanization is one of the leading causes of habitat loss, habitat degradation, and fragmentation. Urban development negatively affects biodiversity. We clarified changes in butterfly communities due to urbanization in urban green areas.

Motivation: Here, we make available a second version of the BioTIME database, which compiles records of abundance estimates for species in sample events of ecological assemblages through time. The updated version expands version 1.0 of the database by doubling the number of studies and includes substantial additional curation to the taxonomic accuracy of the records, as well as the metadata. Moreover, we now provide an R package (BioTIMEr) to facilitate use of the database.Main Types of Variables Included: The database is composed of one main data table containing the abundance records and 11 metadata tables. The data are organised in a hierarchy of scales where 11,989,233 records are nested in 1,603,067 sample events, from 553,253 sampling locations, which are nested in 708 studies. A study is defined as a sampling methodology applied to an assemblage for a minimum of 2 years.Spatial Location and Grain: Sampling locations in BioTIME are distributed across the planet, including marine, terrestrial and freshwater realms. Spatial grain size and extent vary across studies depending on sampling methodology. We recommend gridding of sampling locations into areas of consistent size.Time Period and Grain: The earliest time series in BioTIME start in 1874, and the most recent records are from 2023. Temporal grain and duration vary across studies. We recommend doing sample‐level rarefaction to ensure consistent sampling effort through time before calculating any diversity metric.Major Taxa and Level of Measurement: The database includes any eukaryotic taxa, with a combined total of 56,400 taxa.Software Format: csv and. SQL.

Background: Disturbance is one of the main causes for determining diversity of natural communities. A 3-year (2003 to 2005) monitoring of ant communities at a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in South Korea revealed a drop of ant diversity due to a forest disturbance which was evidenced by decrease of leaf area index (LAI) associated with the dropping of tree branches. In order to determine the process of the decrease in diversity, we compared the annual change of functional ant guilds, which are composed of forest ground foragers (FGF), forest vegetation foragers (FVF), soil and litter dwellers (SLD), and open-land foragers (OF). Results: Four functional guilds of ants responded differently to the forest disturbance; FGF and SLD decreased, but OF and FVF increased. Species richness decreased, due to the decrease in SLD, and species evenness decreased mainly due to a sudden increase in an OF species, Formica japonica. Based on these findings, a mechanism is proposed for the decrease in ant diversity after the forest disturbance. Conclusions: Ant communities responded significantly to even a slight forest disturbance of branch dropping with decrease in diversity and change in functional guild structures.