Almost half of lowland tropical forests are at various stages of regeneration following deforestation or fragmentation. Changes in tree communities along successional gradients have predictable bottom-up effects on consumers. Liana (woody vine) assemblages also change with succession, but their effects on animal succession remain unexplored. Here we used a large-scale liana removal experiment across a forest successional chronosequence (7-31 years) to determine the importance of lianas to ant community structure. We conducted 1,088 surveys of ants foraging on and living in trees using tree trunk baiting and hand-collecting techniques at 34 paired forest plots, half of which had all lianas removed. Ant species composition, B-diversity, and species richness were not affected by liana removal; however, ant species co-occurrence (the coexistence of two or more species in a single tree) was more frequent in control plots, where lianas were present, versus removal plots. Forest stand age had a larger effect on ant community structure than the presence of lianas. Mean ant species richness in a forest plot increased by ca. 10percent-flag-change with increasing forest age across the 31-year chronosequence. Ant surveys from forest ygt;20 years old included more canopy specialists and fewer ground-nesting ant species versus those from forests ylt;20 years old. Consequently, lianas had a minimal effect on arboreal ant communities in this early successional forest, where rapidly changing tree community structure was more important to ant species richness and composition.
