Diversity of the soil entomofauna of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption forest (DR Congo)

Abstract

To find out the diversity of ground-dwelling insects colonizing the forest of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption and the effect of environmental factors on their structure, an exploratory study was conducted. To achieve this, Barber jars were used in addition to active capture by sight hunting. These were trapped from January to September 2021. A total of 1880 individuals were captured and 21 species were identified alongside one unidentified hemipteran species. After analysis, the Formicidae family was the most abundant in terms of individuals (43%) and the Scarabaeidae family in terms of species richness (23%). However, Student's t test confirmed that the season did not influence the abundance of insects. Also, the majority of the fauna surveyed was made up of large species, reflecting adaptation to the environment. Furthermore, the results of this study show that the four environmental parameters evaluated did not have significant effects on either species richness or abundance. Moreover, these results confirm that the intensification of anthropic activities in this forest could lead to a negative effect on the composition of the soil entomofauna of this environment.

Keywords: ground-dwelling insects, forest gallery, environmental factors, anthropogenic activities