Madagascar Ant Diversity Initiative (MANDI)

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Madagascar Ant Diversity Initiative (MANDI)AbstractThe island of Madagascar is one of the world's outstanding biological "hotspots", harboring many rare and endemic species of animals and plants. The Madagascar Ant Diversity Initiative (MANDI) is concerned with discovering and documenting the species of ants and other arthropods that inhabit this island, most of which remain unknown to science. Building on an earlier arthropod inventory of the dry forests of western Madagascar, the current project will focus on sampling from the imperiled eastern rainforests. The collected specimens will be studied by a collaborating team of taxonomists and students-in-training. Results from the project focal group, ants, will be rapidly disseminated online, using a dedicated web site (www.antweb.org). This web site will provide identification tools, biological information, distribution maps, species descriptions, and high-quality color images of each ant species. For selected groups of ants more comprehensive studies will be carried out-using both morphology and DNA sequence data-to determine the evolutionary relationships of the Madagascar ants to their nearest relatives on the African mainland. This will shed light on the origins of the Malagasy ant fauna and will give insight into the processes-such as continental drift and over-water dispersal-that led to the current composition of the island fauna. These results will be compared with what is already known about other Madagascar animals such as lemurs and chameleons.Ants are an important component of the web of life. They participate in many crucial ecosystem processes such as predation, seed dispersal, soil turnover, and recycling of organic matter. As a result ants are sensitive indicators of environmental quality. A comprehensive database on the identity and distribution of ant species in Madagascar will provide critical information for setting conservation priorities in this endangered bioregion, and will facilitate the use of ants in ongoing monitoring and assessment. To ensure that data from MANDI are incorporated into current conservation efforts, formal relationships have been established with governmental agencies in Madagascar. The MANDI project will also result in the training of students, in both the United States and Madagascar, in the fields of systematics, conservation and biodiversity research. The AntWeb site will provide an innovative model for disseminating information about the rich diversity of insect life on planet Earth.