Modelización temporal de la abundancia de hormigas del Bosque Otongach.

Abstract

Ants are very diverse and abundant insects that inhabit almost all ecosystems. The functions that ants perform have directly or indirectly allowed the existence of plants and animals, including humans. Considering their ecological and economic importance, in this study, a temporal analysis of the abundance of ants of Otongachi is conducted, in an Ecuadorian tropical forest with great diversity of flora and fauna. The objective of this study is to model the abundance of ants using econometric methods of time series. Therefore, the study of the abundance of ants will allow us to understand if ants communities are changing. To do this, data provided by the Department of Biology of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional on the abundance of ants, collected by pitfall and winkler traps during the period 2003-2020, are used. The eight most abundant ant genera in the forest were studied, including: Gnamptogenys, NeoponeraL, Pheidole, Solenopsis, Cyphomyrmex, Hypoponera, Octostruma and Strumigenys. Box Jenkins methodologies and nonlinear models failed to adequately model ant abundance data, so abundance forecasts for each genus were made using simple exponential smoothing models. The results of this study suggest that the abundance of ants of each genus studied will remain constant in the future within the Otongachi locality. This constant abundance could be explained due to the very behavior of the ants that is determined by their taxonomy and ecology, or by the influence of climatic or anthropogenic factors. Finally, this work is a contribution to the fields of ecology and economics, especially for the conservation of species and biodiversity.