Project Update: July 2010

Ant sampling was completed at the end of April 2010. We made a change in the method for sampling arboreal ants. We used leaf beating instead of baiting ants with tuna because the dominant arboreal ant’s species belonging to genus Crematogaster monopolized the tuna baits. The same species often occupied half of the baits along transect. As the objective is to capture as many species occurring in the area as possible, we preferred beating the leaves above a 1m² white cloth using a stick and collecting the ants that fall onto the cloth. We are currently identifying the ant species collected during the whole sampling.