IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2020) 11-1

Research articleerd

Ant Biodiversity under Different Fruit Agro-ecosystem inNam Phong Watershed, Thailand
DUANGRAT THONGPHAK*
Department of Entomology, Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Thailand
Email: duathg@kku.ac.th

CHULEEMAS BOONTHAI IWAI
Department of Soil Science and Environment, Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University,
ThailandReceived 23 January 2020

Accepted 5 May 2020(*Corresponding Author)

Abstract Ants are one of significant components of ecosystems. They play important roles
in agro-ecosystem functioning and provide ecological services as bioindicator, pollinator andbiological control. Ants are diverse taxonomic groups. The study of ant diversity in economic
crop areas including guava, mango, custard apple and banana gardens in Nam Phong
Watershed, Khon Kaen province was conducted during November 2017 to August 2018. Ants
were collected using three random sampling methods: manual catching, plant litter siftingand syrup trapping. The result revealed that 5 subfamilies, 13 genera of ants were found in
this study. Five subfamilies found in the studied sites comprised of Dolichoderinae,
Formicinae, Myrmicinae, Ponerinae and Pseudomyrmecinae. The most common species ofant with wide distribution in the study area were Anoplolepis and Diacamma. The ShannonWiener’s species diversity index revealed that the diversity was highest in guava (0.36)
followed by mango (0.35), custard apple (0.34) and lastly the banana garden (0.26). There
was no dominant species of ant in the study areas. The β-diversity score, using Sorensen’ssimilarity coefficient to determine the similarity in community composition, was foundhighest between guava and custard apple garden at 62%, follow by between mango and guava
garden at 46%, and between mango and the banana garden at 38%, the results indicated thatant species diversity was varied in the four studied sites. Therefore, the results from this study
suggests that ant species diversity can be used to support agro- ecosystems management.
Keywords ant diversity, ecosystem service, economic crops, Nam Phong Watershed

INTRODUCTION
Ants may function as bio-indicators, due to their complex ecological interaction within their, and totheir sensitivity to disturbances (Read and Andersen, 2000). It is possible to analyze variations in thecommunity of ants under the concept of functional groups, defined in accordance with their tolerance
to disturbance and environmental stress, as well as with their ability for competitive interactions(Andersen, 1995). Ants play diverse and important ecological roles. Because of their ecologicalsignificance in ecosystems, ants are considered to be the suitable bio-indicator species forbiodiversity studies (Alonso, 2000). Moreover, ants have been used as biological agents of insect
pests in agriculture in several countries include Malaysia (Khoo and Chung, 1989) and Thailand(Kritsaneeapiboon and Saiboon, 2000). Although ants have relatively low species diversity, they are
the single most important arthropod group by their dominance in animal biomass (Alonso and Agosti,2000). Environmental changes have an impact on macro-arthropod abundance (Pearson and Derr,1986; Adis and Latif, 1996). Overall, common species, most habitats are likely to have specializedspecies, which occur in sufficient species diversity and abundance as to be able to serve as suitableterrestrial indicator species of habitat quality and changes.

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OBJECTIVE
The objective of this research was to investigate biodiversity of ants in four different agroecosystems; guava, custard apple, mango and banana gardens in Nam Phong Watershed, Khon Kaen
Province, Thailand.
METHODOLOGY
Study sites were located at Namphong Watershed, Khon Kaen, Thailand. Four different fruit
agroecosystem included guava, custard apple, mango and banana gardens were chosen to investigate
ant diversity. Guava garden with the area of 6 Rai (0.96 ha) was located at Kok Tah Village, MueangDistrict, (16.5° 38' 81.3" N, 102.90° 12' 75" E). There was not any management system in this garden.
Custard apple garden in area of 2 Rai (0.32) was located at Tha Kra Some Village, Nam PhongDistrict, (16.62° 22' 47" N, 102.87° 73' 75" E. Mango garden in area of 2.5 Rai (0.4 ha) was locatedat the same village of the custard apple garden (16.60° 59' 83" N, 102.87° 61' 40" E), both gardens
had no management system. Banana garden in area of 3.7 Rai was located at Nong Ngu Luam Village,
Mueang District, (16.5° 149' 74" N, 102.93° 11' 17" E), herbicide and chemical fertilizer (N-P-K-1515-15) were applied in banana garden. All four studied sites were in Khon Kaen Province.

Fig. 1 Study sites
Ant samples were collected from November 2017 to August 2018. The seasons of collecting
data were divided into wet season and dry season. Ant specimens were collected by using threerandom sampling methods: manual catching, plant litter sifting and syrup trapping. The ecologicalfactors were measured at the same time. Identification of ants to family, genus and species was basedon the keys by Bolton (1994), Hölldobler and Wilson (1990), and Wiwatwitaya and Jaitrong (2001).
The Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index (Krebs, 1999), was used to calculate ants diversity collected.
The formula of the Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index used is presented below
sH′ = Σ (pi) (lnpi)
i=1
where H′ = species diversity index, s = number of species, pi = proportion of the total sample
belonging to ith species.
The Sorensen’s similarity coefficient (Krebs, 1999) was used to measure the beta diversity or
the similarity between two study sites as follows:Ⓒ ISERD

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2aS =2a + b + c
where S = Sorensen’s similarity coefficient, a = number of species in site A and site B, b = numberof species in site B but not in site A, c = number of species in site A but not in site B.
The evenness index (Krebs, 1999) was calculated to determine the equal abundance of ants ineach study site as follows:H′
Evenness =H′MAX
where H′ = observed index of species diversity, H′MAX = maximum possible index of diversity.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 1 Number of genera and family of ants in all sites at Nam Phong Watershed
Study area
Subfamily

Genus

Total

Guava

Custard
apple

Mango

BananaAmblyoponinae

Amblyopone

70209

Dolichoderinae

Ochetellus

10102

Iridomyrmex

00011Anoplolepis

329

112

811460Camponotus

3160019

Nylanderia

7511023

Oecophylla

76

43

195

4318

Diacamma

10260137

Odontoponera

3330036

Pheidole

9110020

Cardiocondyla00011Monomorium

2342136130331Crematogaster

2500025

Number of genus

1086713

Number of specimens

503

296

349

165

1295

Formicinae

Ponerinae

Subfamily

Myrmicinae

20Myrmicinae

15Ponerinae

10Formicinae

50
Guava Mango Custard Banana
apple
Study area

Fig. 2 Comparison of ant diversity in each crop areasⒸ ISERD

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Total of 23 ant genera distributed among five subfamilies were identified from four difference agroecosystems (Table 1, Fig. 2). With the comparative ant communities between the four agroecosystems, the highest number of specimens was recorded in guava garden followed by custard
apple, banana and the lowest in mango garden. Ten genera and five subfamilies were found in guava
garden follow by eight general and four subfamilies from custard apple, seven genera and four
subfamilies from banana garden. Meanwhile there are only six genera and four subfamilies frommango garden. Four species of ants included Anoplolepis, Nylanderia, Oecophylla, Monomorium
were found in all four agro-ecosystems, whilst other species, Iridomyrmex and Cardiocondyla were
found only in banana garden and one species of Crematogaster was found only in guava garden. At
the subfamily level of all sites, Formicinae and Mymicinae had the highest number of four genera.
The richness of genera found in the study is lower compared to the richness recorded in other studies
carried out in crop area in central Thailand (Weerapadtra et al., 2018).

Fig. 3 Comparison between Shannon index (A) and Evenness (B) of ant diversity
in each plantation
The Shannon-Wiener’s species diversity index (Fig. 3A) indicated that the year-round diversity
was the highest in guava garden, followed by mango, custard apple and lastly in banana garden.
Moreover, the highest value of the evenness index was found in guava garden followed closely bymango and custard apple gardens, whereas those for banana garden was markedly lower (Fig. 3B).
This result indicates that a relatively equal abundance of each ant species was present in guava andmango gardens whereas banana garden had an unequal abundance of some ant species.
The species similarity between guava and custard apple gardens, as evaluated by Sorensen’ssimilarity coefficient was the highest, whilst that of between guava and mango gardens wasintermediate and the lowest similarity was found between in custard apple and banana garden (Table2). The relatively high ant species diversity in guava garden may be caused by the correspondingly highdiversity in the plant community and as such would potentially reflect the differences in the canopy
cover and leaf shedding. Hasin (2008) reported that the leaf litter, soil moisture content, and leaf litterbiomass in each study site would likely be affected by differences in each plant community. The leaf
litter provides both food and nest sites to many ant species, so it might be expected that an addition ofboth resources will produce a stronger response from litter-nesting ants (Armbrecht et al., 2006).
Table 2 The Sorensen’s similarity coefficient ants from the four sites
Sorensen's similarity

Study area
Guava

Mango

Custard apple

Banana

Guava

1---

Mango

0.46

1-

-

Custard apple

0.62

0.31

1-

Banana

0.38

0.38

0.31

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IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2020) 11-1CONCLUSION
In conclusion, diversity of ants was different in four crop gardens, which may reflect the different
ecological service they provide in different land uses of the studied sites. However, more detailed
study needs to be done to confirm include potentially factors influenced ant community species,
diversity, and composition, as somewhat intuitively expected but not to date ascertained for thesehabitats. Some species were found in all four crop areas, whilst other species were more specifically
being found only in specific microhabitats in the studied areas. If the understanding of microhabitats
used by specific ant species can be developed along with the key trophic interactions, then thepotential of using ants as terrestrial indicator species for detecting environmental changes canpotentially be reliably and easily (low cost and time) performed compared to some other indicatorspecies. Future research on the roles of ants in an ecosystem and their contribution to ecosystemservice need to be investigated.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was funded by the Khon Kaen University Funding 2018.
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