Ants as bioindicator of soil ecology in conservation management of oil palm plantation in Jambi province
Summary:This research is part of a sub-project under the multidisciplinary project, "CRC 990: EFForTS" ("Collaborative Research Center 990: Ecological and Socio-economic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia)"). Starting from oil palm plantations which intensively managed, this sub-project focusing on proper land management investigations to improve biodiversity and ecosystem functions through ecological restoration by minimizing socio-economic losses. More specifically, this research is focused on changes in ecological factors through the analysis of ants functional diversity and their roles in soil food webs as a bioindicator to assess soil ecological quality, as well as to understand the pattern of relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functions in the conservation mechanism of oil palm plantation landscapes in Jambi Province.
This research aims for (1) studying ants functional diversity and their roles in soil food webs (2) analyzing the effects of oil palm conservation management on soil ecology by using ants as bioindicators, and (3) describing the trophic niches of different ants species in oil palm conservation management to infer relationship between the biodiversity of ants and ecosystem functions they perform.