Project(s) of GTI scholarship holder KOUAKOU Lombart

Taxonomic identification and assessment of the invasion risk by exotic and invasive ant species in Côte d’Ivoire (2015, 2016) &

Can urban parks and forested green spaces be considered as an alternative to biodiversity conservation in Abidjan district? Ants as case study (2017)

Grantee: KOUAKOU Lombart

Internship details

  • Years

    2015, 2016 and 2017

  • Training location

    Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences

  • Belgian supervisor

    Dr. Dekoninck Wouter

  • Studied organism (classification)

    Animalia – Arthropoda – Insecta – Hymenoptera – Formicidae

  • Reports

2015 & 2016 internships:

Biological invasion by exotic organisms and habitat destruction (urbanization) remain the main causes of biodiversity loss on a global scale. Although this phenomenon has become problematic as a result of human activities, studies dealing with exotics and potentially invasive organisms, especially invasive ants in many emerging countries such as Ivory Coast, are insufficient.

Therefore, this project will focus on the early detection and identification of introduced potentially invasive ant species in urban habitats and the assessment of exotic ant invasion risk in Côte d’Ivoire. Many samples and data were collected in cities and entry ports (port, cities of frontier zone, industrial zone), and in protected areas. This project will allow Mr. Kouakou to get access to collections of RBINS, to familiarize himself with the identification of invasive ants, and to use digitalization equipment of the museum to build a photographic library of invasive ants based on specimens from the museum and own collections, in order to develop an identification tool for future taxonomic research. This proposal will also allow him to do barcoding of my potentially invasive ants followed by phylogenic inference with invasive ants of other regions worldwide.

2017 internship:

The depletion of natural habitats due to urbanization is one of the biggest problems for the conservation of biodiversity. In urban ecosystems, native species either adapt or disappear whereas exotic and invasive species are favored by expansion of urban areas. Although urban parks and green spaces may serve as refuges for native species of plants and animals, studies focusing on biodiversity conservation values of these habitats are lacking, despite their decline in the city of Abidjan due to illegal occupation, illicit sale and housing.

This project which will constitute a large part of Mr. Kouakou’s PhD thesis aims to assess the role of urban parks and green spaces in biodiversity conservation using ants as biological indicators. This proposal will allow him to acquire new skills on the field of urban ecology and finally identify and digitalize the ants collected during this last survey.

Additional documentation

Discover more about this GTI project by:

consulting the awareness material related to Mr. Kouakou’s internships; this output was produced in the context of a GTI awareness project executed in 2016 going through Mr. Kouakou’s Powerpoint slides presented at the symposium that took place on September 25, 2015 at RBINS

Scientific papers

Kone, M., Dosso, K., Dakele Yode, C., Kouakou, A. E., N’dri, A. B., Kone, N. A., N’dri, J. K., Dekoninck, W., and Barot, S. (2018). Short-term changes in the structure of ant assemblages in a Guinean savanna under differing fire regimes at Lamto Scientific Reserve, Côte d’Ivoire. J. Trop. Ecol. 34, 326–335. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266467418000305 Kouakou, L. M. M., Dekoninck, W., Kone, M., Delsinne, T., Yeo, K., Ouattara, K., and Konate, S. (2018). Diversity and distribution of introduced and potentially invasive ant species from the three main ecoregions of Côte d’Ivoire (West Africa). Belg. J. Zool. 148, 83–103. https://doi.org/10.26496/bjz.2018.19 Kouakou, L. M. M., Yeo, K., Kone, M., Ouattara, K., Kouakou, A. K., Delsinne, T., and Dekoninck, W. (2018). Espaces verts comme une alternative de conservation de la biodiversité en villes: le cas des fourmis (Hyménoptère: Formicidae) dans le district d’Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire). J. Appl. Biosci. 131, 13358–13381. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jab.v131i1.10 Kouakou, L. M. M., Yeo, K., Ouattara, K., Dekoninck, W., Delsinne, T., and Konate, S. (2018). Investigating urban ant community (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in port cities and in major towns along the border in Côte d’Ivoire: a rapid assessment to detect potential introduced invasive ant species. J. Anim. Plant Sci. 36, 5793–5811. http://m.elewa.org/Journals/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/4.Kouakou-2.pdf Nsengimana, V., Kaplin, A. B., Francis, F., Kouakou, M. L., Dekoninck, W., and Nsabimana, D. (2018). Use of Soil and Litter Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) as Biological Indicators of Soil Quality Under Different Land Uses in Southern Rwanda. Environ. Entomol. 47, 1394–1401. https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvy144 Ouattara, K., Yeo, K., Kone, M., Kouakou, L. M. M., Dekoninck, W., and Konate, S. (2018). Impact of ants on the growth and productivity of Lamto savanna perennial grasses (Cote d’Ivoire). Ijaeb 3, 46–73. Kouakou, L. M. M., Yeo, K., Vanderheyden, A., Kone, M., Delsinne, T., Ouattara, K., Herrera, H. W., and Dekoninck, W. (2017). First morphological and molecular confirmed report of the invasive tropical fire ant, Solenopsis geminata (Fabricius, 1804) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Côte d’Ivoire (West Africa). BioInvasions Records 6, 173–179. https://doi.org/10.3391/bir.2017.6.2.14 Yeo, K., Kouakou, L. M., Dekoninck, W., Ouattara, K., and Konate, S. (2016). Detecting intruders: assessment of the anthropophilic ant fauna (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the city of Abidjan and along access roads in Banco National Park (Côte d’Ivoire). J. Entomol. Zool. Stud. 4, 351–359. http://www.entomoljournal.com/archives/?year=2016&vol=4&issue=4&ArticleId=1062