Arthropod Diversity

Different climate conditions, settings, and moisture could affect the arthropod diversity. It is known that most eukaryotic organisms are arthropods. However, the abundance and richness vary from place to place. It is important to understand the difference across habitat types because it might help to determine which arthropod communities are going to be find in a period of time. Many research have been conducted in order to determine arthropod diversity. Basset, Cizek, Cuénoud, Didham, Guilhaumon, Missa and Curletti (2012) conducted a study on arthropod diversity in a tropical forest in Panama (San Lorenzo Forest). They identified 129,494 arthropods representing 6144 focal species. It allowed them to extrapolate focal arthropod species richness to a larger forest area with unprecedented power. Also, they used taxon ratios to estimate the species richness of nonfocal taxa. Also differences in relative species accumulation rates among arthropod guilds were evaluated. It was found that the total species richness for the entire San Lorenzo forest was consistently quantified at between 18,000 and 44,000 species (including focal and nonfocal species). However, a large proportion of the expected species richness of the forest was recovered for most of the focal taxonomic group. Results supported previous studies that tropical arthropods are more diverse than temperate counterparts.
Habitat 1 (sunny) included coleoptera (beetles), blattodea (cockroaches), diplopoda (millipedes) and hymenoptera (ants). Habitat 2 (shaded) included hymenoptera (ants), aranae (spiders), gastropoda (snails) and amphibia (frogs). Each cup varied in the amount of individuals. For the sunny areas, cup 1 had 45 individuals, cup 2 had 17, cup 3 had 41 and cup 4 had 7 individuals. For the shaded areas, cup 5 had 6 individuals, cup 6 had 4, cup 7 had 12, and cup 8 had 6 individuals. As well, the number of taxa varied. In the sunny areas for cup 1, the total taxa was 4. For cups 2 and 3, it was 3 and for cup 4, it was 2. On the other hand, in the shaded area for cups 5, 6 and 7 the total taxa was 2 and for cup 8 it was
I learned that there was more diversity in sunny areas than shaded areas. My initial expectations were that shaded areas would have more arthropod abundance and evenness than sunny areas. Also, that there would be more richness in sunny areas. In our results, as far as abundance and evenness we obtained a p value > 0.05. Therefore, we favor the null hypothesis. For richness we obtained a p value < 0.05. Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis because there is a significant difference between the two habitats. However, many other variables could have affected our results. We did not obtained what we expected, but I believe that if the shaded area traps would have been placed in other location, we would have obtained more diversity. Also, climate changes might have affect our results, such as rain. Our results does not match the one in the literature review. For future analysis, placing the traps in more expanded areas would be a better options and try to avoid human