Expanding actions: minimality and ergodicity

We prove that every expanding minimal semigroup action of $C^1$ diffeomorphisms of a compact manifold (resp. $C^{1+\alpha}$ conformal) is robustly minimal (resp. ergodic with respect to Lebesgue measure). We also show how, locally, a blending region yields the robustness of the minimality and implies ergodicity.