SPECIES RICHNESS AND DIVERSITY OF ANT AT TWO DIFFERENT SITES IN HUTAN

LIPUR SEKAYU, KUALA TERENGGANU, TERENGGANU.

Abstract

Species richness and diversity is an important characteristic of ecological communities

including the diversity and the richness of ants species. In Malaysia, there are about 200
species of ants and 22 species have been found in Sekayu Reserve Forest, Terengganu. This
study have been carried out to estimate the species richness and diversity of ants in two
different site, which is open(disturbed) and close(undisturbed) area of Sekayu Reserve Forest.
This study has been done at Sekayu Reserve Forest, Terengganu as the study site. The data
collection, which is including two different trap location(open and closed), different materials,
and different baits have been used to carry out this study. For the statistical approaches, we
used Estimates S, PAST, and SPSS to estimates the species richness and diversity of ants. This
result of this study shows that the species richness of ants at the close area are indeed higher
than in open area while the species diversity of the ants have no different between open and
close area. At the end of this study, it shows that there is significant different in species
richness and species diversity of ants in open and close area based on the statistical
approaches.
Introduction

Ants are the insects under the family of Formicidae and related with wasps and bees.
These three insects are belong to the order of Hymenoptera. The ants can be easily identified
by their special characteristics, which is elbowed antennae and a distinctive node-like structure
that forms a slender waist. This insects may form about 15 to 25% of the terrestrial animal
biomass and thrive in most of the ecosystems. Their own success in many kind of environment
has been attributed to their social organization including their own ability to modify the habitats,
tap resources, and can defend themselves. The ants also involved in long term relationship of
co-evolution with other species which led to many kind of relationship such as mutualistic.

The ants species have been classified about more than 12,500 out of an estimated total
of 22,000 species. In Asia, there are 2080 species of ants have been discovered and 200
species were found in Malaysia. The certain number of ants species will show how richness and
diverse it is at the certain place. In addition, it shows that the species richness and diversity is
an important characteristic of ecological communities including the diversity and the richness of
ants species.

Species richness is the number of different species that represented in a set or collection
of individuals. In other words, species richness is simply a count of species, but does not
involved in the abundance of the species or their relative abundance distributions.

Moreover, the species diversity consist of two main components, which is species
richness and species evenness. In general, the species diversity is the effective number of
different species that are represented in a collection of individuals in a dataset. The effective
number of species refers to the number of equally-abundant species that needed to obtain the
same mean proportional species abundance as that observed in the dataset of interest, that all
species may not be equally abundant.

Justification

To access the species richness and diversity of ants in two different site of Sekayu
Reserve Forest, Terengganu by using the suitable method.
Objectives

To estimate species richness of ants in open and close area at Sekayu Reserve Forest,
Terengganu.

To estimate species diversity of ants in open and close area at Sekayu Reserve Forest,
Terengganu.