Agroforestry systems play a pivotal role in tropical conservation. These systems are often located in biodiversity hotspots in biogeographic areas that have seen dramatic habitat losses, such as montane cloud forest (e.g., coffee and cacao) and lowland tropical rainforest (e.g., banana and palm oil). Ants are an important part of the associated diversity found in tropical agroforests, with some keystone species playing an integral role in complex interaction networks. Ants are also central to the functioning of these systems, providing essential ecosystem services that benefit crop production, such as natural pest control, pollination, and nutrient cycling. However, certain species of ants may have negative impacts on crops, both through direct herbivory and indirectly by tending hemipteran insects. Despite their ecological importance, we still lack a general understanding of the role of agroforestry management on ant biodiversity, both at the local farm and landscape scale.

            This symposium aims to explore the general ecological role and diversity of ant communities in tropical agroforestry systems. It also seeks to facilitate a more general understanding of how agroforestry systems can be managed to promote the conservation of ant biodiversity and their associated ecosystem services. By bringing together researchers across different agroforestry systems and biogeographic regions within the tropics we can gain a more holistic understanding of the potential of these systems to harbor ant biodiversity and understand how these communities compare to those in nearby natural areas that have been lost to agriculture. This symposium also offers the opportunity to generalize across systems on the complex community ecology of ants in diversified agricultural systems and better understand their role in agroecological function. Finally, by comparing across systems from different geographic areas and with different management regimes (working both with small and large-scale farmers) we can elucidate the role of agroforestry in ant conservation, which could serve as a general model for sustainable agricultural management and conservation throughout the tropics.