Effects Of Agricultural Landscape On Formicidae Diversity In Typical Regions Of The Lower Reaches Of Yellow River

As the birthplace of Chinese civilization, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River region have a long history with developed agriculture, where, however, have been deeply disturbed by natural and human factors during recent years, resulting in single agricultural landscape structure and significant losses of biodiversity, except the widely distributed ant, the dominant group in the ecosystem, with various types and substantial quantities. Being an important member of the ecosystem, ant’s diversity owns indicative significance for the environment and ecosystem. So, the study on ant diversity and its relationship with the environment and landscape is positive for the healthy development of agricultural ecosystem and the protection of biodiversity.There are 18516 ants captured through pitfall traps, belonging to 5 subfamilies, 12 genera and 17 kinds. The type and quantity of Myrmiciae occupy the most, Next comes to Formicinae with 4 kinds,. Each of Camponotus, Pheidolewestwood and Aphaenogaster owns two kinds, and the number of Ponerinae, Pseudomyrmecinae and Dolichoderinae is the least, each with one genus and one kind.The number of T.caespitum and F.cunicularia is about 40% and 15% of the total respectively, as the dominant groups; for P.luteipes, M.aciculatus, T.kraepelini, the number of individuals is between 5% to 10%, thus they are called the sub-dominant groups; the unit number of the other four kinds, M.pharaonis, T.guangxiensis, T nigra and D.sibiricus. all the others refer to the rare taxa because the unit proportion of each kind is less than 1 percent. Among all of these, dominant groups and sub-dominant groups are widely distributed species. There are significant differences for the number of taxa and individuals between the same habitat in different seasons and different habitats in the same season(P<0.01).Ant richness index has significant differences in four habitats(P<0.01). It is lowest in farmland with only 5.69, and in the others the index is around 8.5 in addition to the highest 9.76 in woodlands. The evenness index has little difference among these four habitats, all between 0.57 and 0.63. The diversity indices were significantly different(p<0.01), only 0.94 in farmland, and the same phenomenon comes to the dominance index as well with 0.55 in farmland and under 0.45 for the other three habitats.the spring woodland ants and environmental data are selected. The results of CCA can better reflect the relationships among species, samples and environment. The results show that environmental factors and species distribution are significantly related to each other(p<0.01), and the most obvious environmental factors which impact ants’ temporal and spatial distribution contain plant cover, soil pH, plant height, total carbon and available phosphorus. M. aciculatus, T. caespitum, T. kraepelini, P. noda, M. Pharaonis, T. nigra, A. smythiesii and P. fervid are sensitive to mineral soil and have a preference for lower mineral environment. While, T. guangxiensis, P. flavipes, D. sibiricus, P. luteipes, C. monju, F. cunicularia, A. takahashii and C. japonicas can be better able to adapt to different environments.In this study, the agricultural landscape ecosystem in Fengqiu city located in the lower reaches of the Yellow River region has been selected as the research object, which is analyzed from seven different scales of 50 m, 100 m, 250 m, 350, 500 m, 750 m and 1000 m separately. Among them, the landscape index on the range of about 100 m can explain the species diversity best. So, 100 m has been chosen as the specific study scale of species diversity and landscape heterogeneity.This paper selects 52 woodland landscape indices of six landscape levels. Through twice factor analyses, 15 landscape indices can be utilized to make analysis on ants. The results show that these 15 kinds of landscape indices play an obvious role in the ants’ abundance on the survey area as well as their spatial and temporal distribution, and the most obvious landscape indexes areMISDI、SHDI、AREA_CV、TECI �'� PROX_MN. Except F. cunicularia, C. monju, P. flavipes and P. luteipes, the other ant species have apparent responses to landscape changes, and the first three all belong to Formicinae.