A comparison of termite assemblages from West African savannah and forest ecosystems using morphological and molecular markers.

ABSTRACT: Termites (Isoptera) are important ecosystem engineers of tropical ecosystems. However, they are notoriously difficult to identify, which hinders ecological research. To overcome these problems, we comparatively studied termite assemblages in the two major West African ecosystems, savannah and forest, both under natural settings and along disturbance gradients. We identified all species using morphological as well as molecular markers. We hypothesized species richness to be higher in the forest than the savannah and that it declines with disturbance in both ecosystems. Overall we found more species in the forest than in the savannah. However, alpha diversity per site did not differ between both ecosystems with on average around ten species. For both ecosystems, species diversity did not dec

SUBMITTER: Schyra J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6550446 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature