Ants Diversity between Organic and Conventional Farm

Erick Swai

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Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: 100%, , language: English, abstract: The diversit...

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Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: 100%, , language: English, abstract: The diversity of ants in conventional and organic farms has not been investigated in Tanzania, therefore, the study aims at investigating that and provides knowledge for ants conservation. Machare Coffee Estate is among unique plantations in which both conventional and organic farming of coffee are performed. The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on the influence of these farming practices on ants' diversity. Knowledge about ants diversity is useful for the conservation of other species which associate with ants in the ecological chain. Therefore from such a gap in knowledge, this study intends to compare the diversity of ants in organic and conventional farms. Moreover, the findings from this study will aid in biodiversity management and conservation in the area in particular. Ants play a vital-ecological role as they influence soil movement, nutrient cycling and water availability in their habitat. Habitat destruction and the use of Agrochemicals are regarded as among the factors that affect the diversity of ants. Machare Coffee Estate is one of the farms which practice both organic and conventional farming. To reveal whether there is a difference in diversity between these two practices this study was conducted at Machare Coffee Estate for three weeks. The study used four transects of 80 m with four quadrants of 10x10 m within it, where 6 pitfall traps with an inter pitfall distance of 3 m were laid down per quadrant on both sites. A total number of 96 pitfall traps were used per site. A total of 2381 ants from five subfamilies were collected. Ant's diversity was analyzed by the Shannon Wiener index and a t-test was used to test the hypothesis. Keywords; Ants, diversity, conventional farming, organic farming