<p>Fine-scale realized niche characterization and habitat affinity.</p>

Significant multivariate differentiation between species was confirmed in realized niche space via PERMANOVA based on Euclidean distances (pseudo-<i>F</i> = 27.01, <i>df</i> = 1, 109, <i>p</i> = 0.001, 999 permutations). (B) Vegetation affinity profile based on Indicator Value (IndVal) analysis for Trees, Bushes, and Grasses. The horizontal lines (dumbbells) represent the ecological distance in habitat association between the two species, where higher IndVal scores denote stronger specificity and fidelity to a vegetation category.

(C) Radar plot comparing the relative multivariate dispersion (used here as a proxy for realized niche breadth) across five architectural and environmental variables for <i>A. cephalotes</i> (green) and <i>A. laevigata</i> (orange). For each variable, niche breadth was calculated from species-specific standard deviations (SD) and scaled relative to the maximum SD between species. Thus, a value of 1.0 represents the species with the greatest dispersion for that variable, whereas values below 1.0 represent proportional dispersion relative to that maximum.

Values are therefore comparable between species within each variable, but not as absolute measures across variables. We evaluated differences in dispersion using PERMDISP (<a href="plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0351518#pone.0351518.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>).</p>