Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) pass the bioindicator scorecard

Abstract

Invertebrates are increasingly being used as biological indicators of land restoration success, land degradation, the con-servation value of tracts of land, and much more. They are either used as indicators of the health and functioning of the environment (ecological and environmental indicators) or as surrogate indicators of the overall diversity or assem-blage composition of other groups within an area (biodiversity indicators). In both cases, the particular taxonomic group that is used tends to be related to the preference of the researcher or to currently favoured taxa. This paper sum-marises the findings from two field studies that evaluated how well a series of invertebrate taxa performed as environ-mental or biodiversity indicators in regard to each other, and also to vertebrates and plants. These studies were per-formed on restored bauxite and mineral sand mines in Western Australia.