Tropical rainforest dynamics and their effects on low flying insect communities in Sabah

Musa Muchtar (2016) Tropical rainforest dynamics and their effects on low flying insect communities in Sabah. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sabah.

	Text 24 PAGES.pdf Download (696kB)
	Text FULLTEXT.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (4MB)

Abstract

Forest rehabilitation is an effort to revive previous drastic biodiversity loss from catastrophic events of forest fires, deforestation and other forms of forest degradations. Its dynamics involved many biological elements which could slowly recolonise the recovering environment. Even though replanted trees had successfully survive, we had not completely understand the restoration process of the total biodiversity of the new ecosystem. This is because there were only few studies carried out which focused other than on the survivals of trees. Hence, this study aims to(1) investigate the diversity of low flying insects (LFI) in different habitat types; (2) investigate the effects of environmental variables on the diversity of low flying insect (LFI) and; (3) measure the success of low flying insect (LFI) survivability in rehabilitated forest by comparing their diversity to the primary forest. Malaise trap was used to collect the low flying insects from four different habitat types namely; Belian (primary forest), Block B (secondary forest with 50% forest cover) and Block C (secondary forest with 16% forest cover) and Demo (rehabilitation forest). Two traps were placed in each habitat types and specimens were collected every two days with three replications. A total of 5,244 individuals of low flying insects were collected which comprised of 14 orders, 120 families and 864 species. The collected low flying insects were dominated by five major orders (Diptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Hemiptera and Lepidoptera) with 93.3% of richness and 97.8% of abundance. Block C recorded the highest diversity (H’=5.58) followed by Block B (H’=5.49), Belian (H’=5.43) and Demo (H=5.06). For Simpson’s Index of diversity, Block C recorded the highest number (1-D=0.9941) followed by Belian (1-D=0.9932), Block B (1-D=0.9908) and Demo (1-D=0.9905). The presence of few species in Diptera and Coleoptera were associated with the high abundance of dead wood, tree dbh between 5 to 10cm and tree dbh more than 10cm, high air temperature, air humidity and large canopy cover. On the other hand, the presence of few species in Hymenoptera and Hemiptera were associated with the low abundance of dead wood, tree dbh between 5 to 10cm and tree dbh more than 10cm, low air temperature, air humidity and small canopy cover. High abundance of tree dbh less than 5cm, showed the association to few species in Diptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera and Hemiptera. Meanwhile, the low abundance of tree dbh less than 5cm showed the association of few species in Diptera, Hymenoptera and Homoptera orders. The orders that could be used as bioindicators due to their high survivability in rehabilitated forest are Lepidoptera, Diptera and Hemiptera. Only several major families from Hymenoptera such as Ichneumonidae, Braconidae and Diapriidae and from Coleoptera such as Chrysomelidae, Elateridae, Staphylinidae, Curculionidae and Cerambycidae could be used as bioinidicator. Finally, Diptera was best order to determine the success of forest rehabilitation based on their diversity since they shared most similar species between the rehabilitated forest and primary forest.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Keyword:	Forest rehabilitation, Biodiversity loss, Low flying insects, Habitat types, Environmental variables, Insect diversity, Survivability
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301-705.5 Biology (General) > QH540-549.5 Ecology
Department:	INSTITUTE > Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation
Depositing User:	DG MASNIAH AHMAD -
Date Deposited:	09 Apr 2025 10:30
Last Modified:	09 Apr 2025 10:30
URI:	https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/43441

Actions (login required)

View Item