Preliminary survey of ants at Tarutao National Park, Southern Thailand

Tarutao National Park is the first national marine park of Thailand. It consists of 51 islands. Though flora and fauna are very rich, there is no record of ant fauna. Thus, this study is a pioneer ant report on this marine park. Six sites were randomly chosen in the largest island of the archipelago, namely Tarutao. Two sampling methods, hand collecting and litter sifting, were applied to ant collecting within a time limit of 30 minutes for each method. There were 3 replications of each sampling method in each study site. This study was conducted during 10-17 March 2001. Five subfamilies of ants, comprising 61 species were found. The results also showed that sites had no effect on species number of ants but sampling methods differed significantly in species number of the subfamily Formicinae (P<0.05).