Ant assemblages of two cities with different ecological conditions in Southern Cisbaikalia

As a result of urbanization the process of city growth and development that accelerates and expands with time stable natural ecosystems are replaced by unstable natural anthropogenic systems. Ants as model objects are of special interest for the study of this process since their significance for the life of ecosystems is very high and diverse. This paper concerns the materials collected between 2003 and 2006 in the cities of Irkutsk and Gusinoozersk (southern Cisbaikalia) differing in landscape conditions: the vicinities of Irkutsk are characterized by subtaiga and forest steppe landscapes, whereas the vicinities of Gusinoozersk, by steppe and fores tsteppe landscapes. The study was performed by standard myrmecological methods (Arnoldi, 1948; Dlusskii, 1965).