Hi Kouakou,

Like you said, it is very unfortunate that you used different sampling procedures for the different habitats. The sampling methods and sample sizes should have been the same for each of the habitats for you to be able to justify your comparisons. The reason is that different sampling procedures and sample sizes may be responsible for differences in abundance and species richness of ants in the various habitats. You may repeat the experiment using the same sampling method and sample size if you must compare your results for the five habitats, otherwise you can go ahead to analyse your results exclusively for each of the habitats. I sincerely wish you the best in your research endeavours.

Hi Kouakou,

Try the software Estimate S, which offers rarefaction methods to standardize your species numbers by samples or individuals and make them comparable, this is often used in not completely sampled communities/assemblages (the usual case). Estimate S also offers different estimates of species richness by using the portion of singletons/doubletons in your samples. The following articles give good overview on the method of estimating and extrapolating diversity:

Gotelli, N. J. & Colwell, R. K. (2001): Quantifying biodiversity: Procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. – Ecology Letters 4: 379–391.

Colwell, R. K. & Coddington, J. A. (1994): Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B 345: 101–118.  

Estimate S is free and version 9.1 can be downloaded from http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/estimates/

On this site you also find the user guide.

Best wishes,

Hubert

Dear Sir

Thank you for your help and your guidance. Dr Hubert , I will read the these article. I thank it will be useful for me. Thank you again.For Dr  Uzoma, I didn't used different procedures. I used one technique to collect  samples on all study sites.