A Comparative assessment of ant species richness under different shade coverages in the Coffee agroecosystem

Abstract

Ants play key role in environment management due to their abundance, Diversity and functional importance. The present study examined the ant species diversity and relative abundance in coffee agro-ecosystem of Wayanad region of the Western Ghats (11⁰.27’00”&11⁰.58’52” and the East Longitude 75⁰.47’50”&76⁰.27’35”) under different intensity of canopies. Ants were recorded from August 2022 to September 2023 from all three sampling locations belonging to six coffee plantations ie; Site 1-Highly Shaded (HSC), Site 2-Moderately Shaded (MSC) and Site 3 -open (OC) coffee plantation. Ants were sampled by using pitfall traps, honey baits, litter sifting, soil core extraction, and transect sampling methods. During the study period, a total of 5311 individual ants were collected representing 51 species in 26 genera, and six subfamilies. The distribution of ants in different subfamily showed a dominance of Formicinae with seventeen morpho-species (32%) followed by Myrmicinae (28%). Shannon-Weiner (H¹) diversity index value of site 1 has 3.435 while site 2 has an H¹ value of 3.477and site 3 has 3.197. Site 2 has a slightly higher H¹ value than site 1 owing to its high species richness of 48 ant species and site 3 has lowest H¹ value with 38 ant species. Site 3 has higher Simpson’s (D) diversity index value than site 2 and site 1. High species dominance in habitat would automatically mean that there would be low evenness.