COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF SPECIES DIVERSITY AND ABUNDANCE OF ANTS

ABSTRACT

Within the University of Benin Demonstration Secondary School, Benin City, Edo state lies an overgrown field that harbors diverse species of faunal and floral. An aspect of the field was sampled using the beating tray and sweep net techniques to determine the diversity of ant species, abundance of ant species and to compare the relative efficiencies of each sampling technique. The recovered samples were euthanized, properly labeled and taken to the laboratory for further analysis. According to further analyses of the collected samples, a total of 185 ants from two subfamilies; Formicinae and Myrmicinae were sampled. We sampled a total of 4 species which are Camponotus cf. vividus, Lepisiota capensis, Nylanderia jaegerskioeldi and Crematogaster senegalensis. C. vividus was the most abundant species in both sampling methods constituting 85.71% and 83.33% of sweep net and beating tray techniques respectively. The above said also shows the sweep net technique was more efficient in this survey. Furthermore, the species accumulation curve showed that more species of ants are likely in the field.