Abstract
Riparian areas hold vast number of flora and fauna with exceptional contributions to the ecosystem. A study was conducted in Sungai Sepetang, Sungai Rembau and Sungai Chukai to identify the insect community in a riparian zone of Peninsular Malaysia. Sampling was conducted in six consecutive months from December 2017 to May 2018 during both day and night using sweep nets. Twenty sampling stations (S1-S20) had been assembled along the riverbanks with an average distance of 200 m between each station. The 17,530 collected insects were from 11 orders and consisted of Diptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Neuroptera, Orthoptera, Blattodea, Thysanoptera, Mantodea and Odonata. The three most abundant orders were Diptera (33.84%; 5933 individuals), Coleoptera (28.82%; 5053 individuals) and Hemiptera (25.62%: 4491 individuals). The collected insect community consisted of different guilds such as the scavenger, predator, herbivore, pollinator and parasitoid. Sungai Sepetang and Sungai Rembau were dominated by mangrove flora, Sonneratia caseolaris (Myrtales: Lythraceae), while Sungai Chukai was dominated by Barringtonia racemosa. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) in the composition of insects between the three rivers though clustering analysis showed that the insect communities in Sungai Sepetang and Sungai Rembau were 100% similar compared to Sungai Chukai which consisted of a totally different community. There is a significant negative correlation between abundance of insects with salinity and wind speed at Sungai Chukai and Sungai Sepetang.
Highlights
Insects are an important faunal group in terrestrial ecosystems where they play vital roles in stabilising the ecosystem
Insect and vegetation spatial variability across different locations A total of 17,530 insect specimens were collected in six consecutive months from three riparian zones in Peninsular Malaysia
A checklist of insects collected in the riparian zones of Peninsular Malaysia is shown in (Table 1)
Summary
Insects are an important faunal group in terrestrial ecosystems where they play vital roles in stabilising the ecosystem. In response to any environmental change, each species will behave complementarily to one another, as in one species will increase while the other decreases (Schowalter 2016). This group of organism is sensitive to changes in environment, making it possible to be used as an indicator for conservation planning (Kremen et al 1993). As a sophisticated group of organisms, insects may adapt to diverse environments including aquatic, semiaquatic and terrestrial habitat. They inhabit the most extreme conditions on earth (hot springs, tundra, deserts). Certain individual species may only live in a limited dimension of space (Stewart et al 2015)
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