In 1993 the Royal Geographical Society was invited by the Department of
Wildlife in Tanzania to co-ordinate a comprehensive ecological survey of
Mkomazi Game Reserve in northern Tanzania.
Situated on the Tanzania-Kenya
border between Mount Kilimanjaro and the coast (see map below), Mkomazi supports
a wide range of different habitats, and consequently, an impressive
complement of plants and animals. Bird and insect diversity are particularly
high, but a large number of mammals,
such as elephants, buffalo, giraffes, zebras, lions, cheetahs and leopards also live in the reserve. In
light of the success of other reserves, such as the Serengeti and Ngorogoro
Crater National Parks, the Tanzanian authorities are keen to realise the
potential of Mkomazi as a 'ecotourism' resource as well as a
wildlife reserve and a long-term research and education facility.
The Mkomazi Ecological Research Programme was established with the aim of providing the ecological information needed to develop a strategy for the sustainable management of the reserve and the surrounding area. Knowledge of the distribution, density and diversity of different groups of animals and plants is invaluable for the formulation of management decisions in the future. Ultimately, monitoring of the game reserve - which will be vital to our understanding of the way in which the Mkomazi ecosystem maybe affected by future land uses - will be carried out by Tanzanian scientists based at a newly-created research centre at Ibaya.
The study of beetle diversity is one of five investigations which focus on invertebrates in the reserve; the other groups of invertebrates being investigated (by entomologists from Oxford University and the Natural Resources Institute) are spiders, bugs, bees and grasshoppers. Owing to the enormous contribution that insects and their relatives make to biodiversity, assessing invertebrate diversity in different habitat types in the reserve will help us prioritize the most important areas for the conservation of biodiversity. The main objective of this project has therefore been to sample for beetles in as many habitats in the reserve as possible, and to compare the relative diversities of their beetle communities.
So far, the following habitat types have been sampled for beetles using pitfall traps for ground-dwellers and insecticide mist-blowing for tree-dwellers: burnt hillside, unburnt hillside, burnt grassland, unburnt grassland, Acacia parkland, Acacia drepanolobium flood plain, Dichrostachys bushland, Combretum bushland, Spirostachys forest, Setaria hill-top grassland, riverine bushland and Commiphora woodland. To-date, over 6,000 beetles have been mounted and labelled at the Natural History Museum, and are now being sorted species. Once this task has been completed it will be possible to assess which habitats exhibit the greatest beetle diversity, and thus which will be of most significance for the conservation of biodiversity.
The Corporate Patrons of the Mkomazi Ecological Research Programme are:
British Airways, The British Council, BP Tanzania, CMC Land Rover Tanzania,
Friends of Conservation, and the Sheraton Hotel (Dar es Salaam).
Illustrations
This project is part of the Ecological Patterns and Processes Research Theme.
For further information contact:
Jon Davies
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 5BD UK
Tel: +44 (0) 171 938 8829 Fax: +44 (0) 171 938 8937
Email: jond@nhm.ac.uk
