Comparison of manual and vacuum cleaner intake approaches efficiency for sampling subtropical ants using Winkler extractor across different habitats

Sampling efforts and approaches represent the foundation of ecological and biodiversity studies. Winkler extractors have been increasingly used over the past 40 years to sample leaf litter and topsoil arthropods. Its use, however, is constrained by various factors, such as the litter quantity, environmental moisture levels or insect composition and, as such, may limit our understanding of the species communities sampled. The manual intake through hand sampling requiring the manual collection of surface litter and loose soil can be perceived as time-consuming, risk-prone and may be suboptimal to sample arthropods. Consequently, improving the manual intake method through mechanical suction could potentially address some of these limitations. This study presents a comparison of two field collection approaches prior to the treatment of ants using Winkler extractors. Here we evaluated the efficiency and complementarity of the manual and the vacuum cleaner intake across three habitats (woodland, grassland and wasteland) to measure the diversity (alpha and beta), abundance and richness of ants. We hypothesized that the use of vacuum cleaner intake offers a more comprehensive sampling in terms of ant abundance, species richness, and diversity, while being more time efficient in grasslands and wasteland habitats compared to the manual intake. Our results show that in grassland and wasteland habitats, vacuum cleaner intake presented an increase in ant abundance relative to the manual method but not in species richness nor diversity collected. Within woodlands no significant differences were observed for the different indices used. In terms of practicality, however, the vacuum cleaner intake showed greater efficiency, being about 36% faster than manual intake. In summary, the vacuum cleaner intake method showed only practical benefits but no major improvements in the characterization of the ant communities sampled across these habitats. • In grassland and wasteland habitats, vacuum cleaner intake has a significant advantage over manual intake in terms of abundance, but there is no significant difference in terms of richness and diversity. • In woodland, vacuum cleaner intake and manual intake show equal effectiveness in terms of species richness, abundance, and diversity. • In terms of practicality and time cost, vacuum cleaner intake saves significant time compared to manual intake and is also safer.