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Abstract

There is a growing need for the identification of species characteristics of certain habitats and their vegetation formation or their sucessional states, in order to evaluate, monitor and preserve the environment. Invertebrates have often been targeted for such studies. Recently, much attention has been given to the testing of the power of these bioindicators, especially those that can be used to estimate species richness of "hyperdiverse" terrestrial groups, such as insects, mites and other arachnids, nematodes, fungi and microorganisms in general. This is because it is very timeconsuming to make full inventories of these groups and it is also due to the urgent demands regarding environmental questions. Ants are particularly convenient for use as bioindicators because they present relatively high local abundance, high species richness locally and globally, and many specialized species. They are geographically widespread, easily sampled, usually easily separated in morphospecies and are sensitive to modifications in environmental conditions. Thus, the study of ant communities has benn used as a valuable bioindicator of environmental conditions in studying disturbance, forest and savanna monitoring after burning or different patterns of land use. Further, data has indicated that the species richness of ants in potentially useful for the evaluation of invertebrate diodiversity in general.