Prediction of abundance of ants according to climate change scenarios RCP 4.5 and 8.5 in South Korea

In order to identify change of ant distribution expected due to climate change in South Korea, data on ants collected from 344 forest sites were used to predict change of abundance of ant species. In distribution of abundance along temperature gradient, 16 species displayed the patterns expected from normal distribution. For these species, abundance in temperature zones was used to link with temperature changes and predict the abundance. Temperature changes were based on Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5, and the national average and distribution of abundance during the two periods from 2011 to 2015 and from 2056 to 2065 were predicted. The rate of change of ant abundance and the average temperature of the collection sites showed a clearly positive relationship. Based on these results, qualitative prediction (increase or decrease) was conducted for species with ≥ 1% occurrence. The results showed that eight species would increase and 29 decrease, so the number of the decrease-expected species is three times more than that of the increase-expected species.