Morphological Identification and Prevalence of Ants in Kuchlak, Balochistan

Research Article

Abstract

This field study was conducted for morphological identification of ant species and to explore the indoor and outdoor ant species prevalence in the Kuchlak area, a town near Quetta, Balochistan province of Pakistan, which helps us to know which species have become more abundant or which species are dominant now. This research was carried out in April 2021 to March 2022. Quantitative collections were made on both indoor and outdoor Ant species of Kuchlak. Ants were gathered from different collection sites of Kuchlak randomly from indoor (kitchen, rooms, washrooms, stores and apartments) and outdoor (grassy fields, forest, footpaths, streets, barren ground, butcher shops and graveyards) sites by hand-pick method. Their identification has been done on the basis of their colour, absence or presence of nodes on petiole, antennal segments, shapes of thorax and abdomen. All the observations were based on the worker caste. A total of 1056 samples were collected from different areas of Kuchlak in which total 10 species were identified i.e. Tetramorium caespitum 20.8%, Monomorium pharaonis 14.2%, Paraterchinia longicornis 14%, Tapinoma sessile 11.6%, Messor instabilis 10.9%, Pheidole megacephala 8.5%, Crematogaster subnuda 7.6%, Monomorium indicum 5.2%, Camponotus modoc 4.8% and Cataglyphis bellicose 2.4% which are belonging to three subfamilies i.e. Myrmicinae, Formicinae and Dolichodenae. Tetramorium caespitum species was most dominant, while Cataglyphis bellicosa was the least abundant species. Shannon diversity index (H), evenness EH and Margalef’s index for species richness of outdoor ant species are as follows: 1.99, 0.90 and 1.23, respectively, are greater than the indoor ant species 1.55, 0.86 and 0.84, respectively.  All the species were first recorded in this study.