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Mountains are home to 85% of the world's amphibian, bird, and mammalian species, despite covering only 25% of the Earth's surface. This makes them a highly diverse ecosystem and a key focus for conservation efforts.

In mountainous regions, species diversity—the measure of how many different species are present—can vary with elevation due to environmental factors like climatic conditions. However, a recent study from the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has uncovered a different factor driving bird species diversity at mid-elevations: the presence of ants from the Oecophylla genus.

"In mountains, you often see hump-shaped patterns [of species diversity], and for a long time, people have been interested in why this happens. One of the mechanisms they did not think much about was biotic interactions like competition," says Kartik Shanker, Professor at CES and co-author of the study published in Ecology Letters.

Oecophylla ants, known for their aggressive and dominant behavior, are voracious predators of insects at the bases of mountains found in the paleotropics, covering Africa, Asia and Oceania. The researchers decided to test how the ants' presence affects the diversity of insect-eating birds, especially at lower elevations.

A previous study led by co-author Trevor D Price, Professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, showed that the presence of Oecophylla ants at the base of the eastern Himalayas decreased the density of insects and might therefore have an effect on the presence of insect-eating birds. In the current study, the team wanted to see if this pattern was more widespread among other insect-eating species as well.

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