Termites and ants are ecologically of extreme importance, playing key roles in most tropical and subtropical biomes. Their elimination would fundamentally change the character of their ecosystems. Therefore these taxa merit the categorization as "ecosystem engineers" of special eminence. Some species of ants for example play a vital role as seed dispersers while others are most efficient predators controlling the abundance of very many other arthropods, among those also termites. Termites shape entire landscapes in the tropics and subtropics, particularly conspicuous in those species constructing large and abundant epigaeic nest mounds (in Africa mainly the Macrotermitinae). Termites play an especially prominent role in drylands, where they are conspicuous for their high diversity and their dominant role as macrodetritivores governing fundamental ecosystem processes of nutrient cycling and energy flow. Many species of termites and ants lead a hypogaeic life. Due to their very cryptic life these species' ecological importance has up to date most probably been greatly underestimated. For the already mentioned and many further reasons ants and termites are ideal candidates as indicator organisms, e.g. for the study of biodiversity changes and other ecosystem alterations in the course of anthropogenic land conversion and also for monitoring the long-term changes caused by global climate change. First of all they often form narrow niches in regard to all relevant parameters (nutrition, microclimate, habitat structure, etc.). Secondly the essentially sessile way of life and their low mobility compared to other animal groups guarantees a tight habitat connection.

Our goal is to study the biodiversity of termites and ants along a natural climatic north-south gradient and along anthropogenic gradients produced by differing land use systems varying in their impact strength. These studies are executed along the steep climatic gradient in West Africa (in Benin, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast). We want to elucidate these ecosystem engineers' impact on soil properties, their efficiency in soil bioturbation, their influence on the vegetation and their interactions among each other to better understand their ecological roles in natural and man-made systems. We furthermore want to test their suitability as indicator organisms and we want to apply this knowledge for designing more productive use systems that are more sustainable and that halt any further biodiversity erosion and hopefully even revert the already suffered losses to some extent.

This project is strongly linked with the subproject BIOTA-S10 in Namibia. Because the same methods will be used, it will be possible to compare our results with those of S10.