Date: September 22, 2026
Guangzhou, China: A pioneering research delivers the first complete ant fauna inventory for the Xisha Islands, a tropical coral archipelago exposed to climate change, sea-level rise and growing human pressure. Researchers surveyed seven islands, combining morphological taxonomy and COI-barcode-based molecular species delimitation to disentangle how geography, vegetation and anthropogenic disturbance mould island ant assemblages.
Scientists documented 21 ant species from 17 genera and 5 subfamilies; 70% were native taxa and 30% exotic species. Ant species richness exhibited marginally positive, statistically non‑significant correlations with nearest neighbour distance, which deviates from classic island biogeography theory. No measured environmental variables could significantly explain ant community composition.
Anthropogenic disturbance stood out as the key factor boosting exotic ant colonization. Highly disturbed Yongxing Island hosted three exotic ants including globally invasive fire ants Solenopsis invicta and S. geminata, while low-disturbance islands contained at most one non-native ant. Vegetation type exerted negligible influence over ant richness and exotic species proportion.
Most Xisha ants are ground-dwelling omnivores. Up to 75% of recorded ant species build mutualistic relationships with hemipteran insects; many taxa display potential pollination and seed dispersal functions critical for the depauperate island plant communities. No endemic ant species were detected, consistent with the archipelago's young geological origin.
This study establishes vital biodiversity baseline data for conservation and invasive species management. Researchers warn that preventing invasive fire ant spread towards less disturbed islands is an urgent conservation priority. Sampling constraints and reliance on single locus barcoding point to future multilocus genomic research and field functional validation needs.
Original Source
H.-Y. Chen, Z.-X. Liu, Z.-H. Xu, R.-C. Wang, and S.-X. Luo, "Ant Diversity of the Xisha Islands: Community Structure, Exotic Species Colonization, and Ecological Functions in a Tropical Coral Archipelago," Biological Diversity (2026): 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1002/bod2.70036 .
Keywords
Diversity, exotic species, formicidae, mutualism, pollination, South China Sea
About the Author
Hua-Yan Chen (First author), Associate Researcher and Master's Supervisor at the South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research mainly focuses on insect diversity and evolution. He has published more than 50 papers as the first or corresponding author in international journals including Systematic Entomology and Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology.
Shi-Xiao Luo (Corresponding author), Research Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on plant-pollinator co-evolution and pollinator insect diversity. He has achieved significant progress investigating the symbiotic pollination mutualisms between leafflowers and leafflower moths, as well as between Schisandraceae plants and resin midges. His related research outputs appear in journals such as New Phytologist, The American Naturalist, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
About the Journal
Biological Diversity (ISSN: 2994-4139) is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal sponsored by the South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences ((SCBG, CAS), and published in partnership with John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. It is dedicated to advancing biodiversity conservation, safeguarding ecosystem functions and services, and promoting the sustainable utilization of biological resources under global environmental change. The journal welcomes original research, reviews, commentaries, and short communications across a broad spectrum of disciplines, including botany, zoology, microbiology, taxonomy, phylogenetics, genomics, cytology, ecology, climatology, economics, sociology, and real-time policy theory. The journal is indexed in Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
