Seven grassland sites were sampled at South Africa's Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Park boundary with the surrounding land, to assess changes in arthropod diversity in response to land use. Epigaeic arthropods were sampled using pitfall traps and a sweep net. In all, 262 morphospecies were collected, but this is an underestimate of total local species richness. Fifty percent of the species caught were single occurrences. The number of species, families and orders represented at each of the seven sites was not significantly different, but the number of individuals was significantly different. Between-site comparisons, using multivariate statistics, did not reveal any strong site groupings, with all sites being unique. The conclusion is that the reserve boundary does not significantly divide arthropod diversity on a simple inside-versus-outside basis. A major factor influencing the arthropod assemblages was intensity of land use. Indigenous game animals and domestic cattle had the same effect, and it was the intensity of trampling that was important rather than the type of trampling. Human settlements had a major impoverishing effect. The Coleoptera families, Cicindelidae, Staphylindae and Carabidae, were particularly sensitive indicator taxa of land use Scarabaeidae species were the only group that were severely affected by the fence boundary, simply because their food source, the faeces of large native mammals, was inside, leaving them without resources outside the reserve.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Ackery, P.R. and Vane-Wright, R.I. (1984) Milkweed Butterflies, London: Natural History Museum.
Alder, H.L. and Roessler, E.B. (1968) Introduction to Probability and Statistics, 4th edn. San Francisco: Freeman.
Andersen, A.N. (1987) Ant community organisation and environmental assessment. In The Role of Invertebrates in Conservation and Biological Survey (J.D. Majer, ed.) pp. 43–52. Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management Report.
Beattie, A.J. and Oliver, I. (1994) Taxonomic minimalism. TREE 9, 488–90.
Clark, T.E. and Samways, M.J. (1995) Ecological landscaping for conservation of macro-arthropod diversity in a southern hemisphere (South African) urban botanic garden. In Habitat Creation and Wildlife Conservation in Post-industrial and Urban Habitas (J. Rieley and S. Page, eds) UK: Packard.
Davis, J.A., rolls, S.W. and Balla, S.A. (1987) The role of the Odonata and aquatic Coleoptera as indicators of environmental quality in wetlands, In The Role of Invertebrates in Conservation and Biological Survey (J.D. Majer, ed.) pp. 31–42. Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management Report.
Greenslade, P.J. (1973) Sample ants with pitfall traps: digging-in effect. Insectes Soc. 20, 345–53.
Greenslade, P. and Greenslade, P.J.M. (1971) The use of baits and preservatives in pitfall traps. J. Aust. Ent. Soc. 10, 253–60.
Hill, M.O. (1973) Diversity and evenness: a unifying notation and its consequences. Ecology 54, 427–32.
Hill, M.O. (1979a) DECORANA—A Fortran program for detrended correspondence analysis and reciprocal averaging. New York: Cornell University.
Hill, M.O. (1979b) TWINSPAN—A Fortran program for arranging multivariate data in an ordered two-way table by classification of the individuals and attributes. New York: Cornell University.
Kirby, P. (1992) Habitat Management for Invertebrates: A Practical Handbook, Bedfordshire: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Klein, G.C. (1989) Effects of forest fragmentation on dung and carrion beetle communities in central Amazonia. Ecology 70, 1715–25.
Kremen, C., Colwell, R.K., Erwin, T.L., Murphy, D.D., Noss, R.F. and Sanjavan, M.A. (1993) Terrestrial arthropod assemblages: Their use in conservation planning. Conserv. Biol. 7, 796–808.
Ludwig, J.A. and Reynolds, J.F. (1988) Statistical Ecology, New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Majer, J.D. (1978) An improved pitfall trap for sampling ants and other epigaeic invertebrates. J. Aust. Ent. Soc. 17, 261–62.
Majer, J.D. (1983) Ants: Bio-indicators of minesite rehabilitation, land-use, and land conservation. Environ. Manag. 7, 376–83.
Majer, J.D. (1987) Dealing with data from extensive invertebrate surveys. In The Role of Invertebrates in Conservation and Biological Survey (J.D. Majer, ed.) pp. 53–64. Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management Report.
New, T.R. (1987) Insect conservation in Australia: towards rational ecological priorities. In The role of Invertebrates in Conservation and Biological Survey (J.D. Majer, ed.) pp. 5–20. Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management Report.
Noss, R.F. and Harris, L.D. (1986) Nodes, networks, and MUMs: preserving diversity at all seales. Environ. Manag. 10, 299–309.
Niemela, J., Spence, J.R., Langor, D., Haila, Y. and Tukia, H. (1993) Logging and boreal ground-beetle assemblages on two continents: implications for conservation. In Perspectives on Insect Conservation (K.J. Gaston, T.R. New and M.J. Samways, eds) pp. 29–50. Andover: Intercept.
Oliver, I. and Beattie, A.J. (1993) A possible method for the rapid assesement of biodiversity. Conserv. Biol. 7, 562–68.
Owen, D. and Owen, J. (1990) Assessing insect species-richness at a single site. Environ. Conserv. 17, 362–64.
Pearson, D.L. and Cassola, F. (1992) World-wide species richness patterns of tiger beetles (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae): indicator taxon for biodiversity and conservation studies. Conserv. Biol. 6, 376–91.
Pielou, E.C. (1984) The Interpretation of Ecological Data: A Primer on Classification and Ordination. New York: Wiley.
Prendergast, J.R., Quinn, R.M., Lawton, J.H., Eversham, B.C. and Gibbons, D.W. (1993) Rare species, the coincidence of diversity hotspots and conservation strategies. Nature 365, 335–37.
Samways, M.J. (1989) Insect conservation and the disturbance landscape. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 2, 183–94.
Samways, M.J. (1990) Species temporal variability: epigaeic ant assemblages and management for abundance and scarcity. Oecologia 84, 482–90.
Samways, M.J. (1993) Insect in biodiversity conservation: some perspectives and directives. Biodiv. Conserv. 2, 258–82.
Samways, M.J. (1994) Insect Conservation Biology. London: Chapman & Hall.
Scholtz, C.H. and Holm, E. (1989) Insects of Southern Africa. Durban: Butterworths.
Southwood, T.R.E. (1978) Ecological Methods, London: Chapman & Hall.
Stork, N.E. (1993) How many species are there? Biodiv. Conserv. 2, 215–32.
Turin, H. and den Boer, P.J. (1988) Changes in the distribution of carabid beetles in the Netherlands since 1880. II. Isolation of habitats and long-term trends in the occurrence of carabid species with different powers of dispersal (Coleoptera, Carabidae). Biol. Conserv. 44, 179–200.
Unwin, D.M. and Corbet, S.A. (1991) Insects, Plants and Microclimate, Slough: Richmond Publishing.
van Oudtshoorn, F.P. (1992) Guide to Grasses of South Africa Pretoria: Arcadia.
Yen, A.L. (1987) A preliminary assessment of the correlation between plant, vertebrate and Coleoptera communities in the Victorian mallee. In The Role of Invertebrates in Conservation and Biological Survey (J.D. Majer, ed.) pp. 73–88. Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management Report.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rivers-Moore, N.A., Samways, M.J. Game and cattle trampling, and impacts of human dwellings on arthropods at a game park boundary. Biodivers Conserv 5, 1545–1556 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00052115
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00052115