Effect of Agriculture on Abundance and Diversity of Arthropods with Chewing Mouth Parts at Sokoine University of Agriculture Main Campus

Abstract

This report concerns the effect of agriculture on abundance and diversity of arthropods with chewing mouth parts at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) main campus. The purpose of the study was to determine and compare abundance and diversity between the two strata. Data collection involved the use of pitfall traps and species diversity was analyzed with Shannon-Weiner diversity index as in table 1-2, Sorenson similarity index and plot averaging to get species total abundance as in table 3-4 in the list of tables.The results where, bush land had high diversity index (2.199) compared to that of cultivated land (2.103) with a range of 0.096 this could be due to several factors e.g. burning or application of the agro-chemical which are extensively used in the cultivated site. Also the total abundance in the bush land was 103 and that of cultivated land was 91, that of bush land being greater than cultivated land by 12 individuals, possibly due to the same reasons.These results implies that agriculture has effect on arthropods with chewing mouth parts because of different agriculture techniques applied in cultivated land e.g. tilling, burning, chemical application, all these pose effect to the chewing arthropods.

Keywords: Agriculture practices, chewing arthropods, abundance, diversity