Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) diversity and bioindicators in the lands with different anthropogenic activities in New Damietta, Egypt.

Ant diversity and bioindication are the main issues in myrmecological studies worldwide for their role in detection habitat characteristics and any ecosystem with sensitive finger printing the correlating changes. New Damietta is a city located along coastal Mediterranean Sea. Husbandry and urbanization impacts were the main anthropogenic activities at six study sites, but three control sites were free from such practices from marsh 2007 to February 2009. Within each site, 20 pitfall traps were simultaneously set in grid arrangement for two consecutive days each month. A
total of 28 species were identified. Significant differences in species diversity, richness and abundance were apparent among the sites. The spatial variation among the study sites recorded the highest percent of species number and abundance (25 species of 5570individuals) at control sites. Meanwhile, the husbandry sites were a highly abundant impact and concomitantly recorded reduction of the value of species richness, Simpson diversity index and evenness.
Ant species and composition succeed in differentiation the impacted sites far away their control throughout clustering, while five indicative ant species and the abundance level of certain ant species were significantly correlated with the status of study sites. In brief, environmental factors indicated their importance which reflects the changes of habitat characteristics, ant species and species biodiversity in study sites.