Assessment of Ant's Biodiversity in human land use habitats using the SDR software

Abstract

Abstract Ants are a major part of the ecosystem as they assist in the decomposition process and improve soil quality. They are a great component of animal biomass and act as ecosystem engineers. We assessed the species richness and biodiversity of these arthropods in the habitats with varying degrees of human impact in Shiraz, Fars Province, southern Iran. To this end, 6 habitats (a farm, a dry land and a natural garden in the countryside, and three old gardens (Be’sat, Janat, Babakoohi) in the city) were chosen and sampled bimonthly during 2015–2106. A total of 6270 ant workers belonging to 30 species, 12 genera, and 3 subfamilies were recorded. The most specious subfamily was Formiciniae (16 Specious) followed by Myrmicinae (12 Species), and Dolichoderinae (2 Species). All biodiversity indices (Shannon wiener, Simpson and Margalof) showed a greater diversity in both natural garden and urban landscape: Be’sat and Janat garden, with the lowest amount of human effects, respectively as well as Babakoohi and the lowest in the agricultural and dry land, which had the most effect of human disturbance. Although a significant difference was observed with the habitats (F, 4.255, P = 0.004) and the months (F, 4.327, P = 0.002) of sampling, there was not a significant difference between Babakoohi, natural garden, Janat and Be’sat gardens ((P > 0.05)) nor between field and dry land (P > 0.05), and those two habitats had fewer species compared with the natural garden and city landscape. The highest Jaccard similarity index (0.773) was seen between Janat garden in the city landscape and Babakoohi and then with both Janat and Be’sat gardens (0.731); however, the lowest (0.48) was seen between dry land and Be’sat garden. The result showed that the species composition in the city landscape including different gardens is more similar than the farm and dry land. The Jaccard similarity index between dry land and farm was 0.58 which indicated the low similarity of the ant species in those regions.