Keywords :
Agriculture,
Ants,
Diversity,
Forest,
Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve
บทคัดย่อ :
Ants play essential roles in terrestrial ecosystems, for example, soil
engineers, seed dispersers, biological control agents, and indicators to monitor environmental stress and disturbance. This research
aimed to study the diversity and community composition of ground-dwelling ants at Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve and its surrounding
areas. Pitfall traps collected ground-dwelling ants from three habitat types: agricultural areas, dry dipterocarp forests, and dry evergreen
forests; the environmental factor in this work was soil temperature. The results revealed that 109 ant species in 40 genera belonging to 8
subfamilies. Notably, the dry dipterocarp forest exhibited the highest ant diversity with 71 species, followed by the dry evergreen forest
and agricultural area with 62 and 54 species, respectively. Overall, the present study reveals that soil temperature and vegetation
significantly influenced ant species composition; ant species being more likely to be found in forests than in agricultural areas, and
species classified as uncommon groups based on occurrence were the largest group in every study site. Besides, the information on ant
species obtained from this work had the potential to be used as bioindicator species for ecosystem management and human impacts on
forests.
เอกสารอ้างอิง :
Khongthawie, S., Hasin, S., Ponpinij, S., & Pinkaew, N. (2023). Ground-dwelling ant diversity in forests and agricultural land use at Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve, Thailand. Biodiversitas Journal of Biological Diversity, 24(11).
