Environmental Factors and Community Structure of Ground-dwelling Insects in Different Land Uses, Pathum Thani Province

Abstract

The species diversity and community structure of ground-dwelling insects were carried out in different land uses in Pathum Thani province. The land uses were classified into four types namely 1) Oil palm plantation, 2) Eucalyptus plantation, 3) Agroforestry plantation and 4) Orange garden. Some environment factors and insect data were conducted in each land use. Pitfall-trap and Winkler extractors were used to collect ground-dwelling insects, during January and December 2015 by simple sampling spread across the area. The samples were collected every 2 months. A total of 144 species, belonging to 29 families and 9 order of ground-dwelling insects were found. The highest number of insects that found were in the Hymenoptera order (55 species), followed by Coleoptera order. For the diversity index and similarity index, it was found that Eucalyptus plantation was the highest. The rainy season was found ground-dwelling insect species more than dry season (125 and 112 species, respectively). It was also found that environmental factors; soil pH, Phosphorus and Nitrogen were related to the number of ground-dwelling insect species (p-value<0.01). The result revealed that some environmental factors influenced the ground-dwelling insect community in different land uses. Thus, the suitable environmental management can maintain ground-dwelling insects.

Keywords: species diversity; ground-dwelling insects; environmental factors; land use

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