ABSTRACT

The study was conducted in 2021 at the Mycology Research Laboratory, Botanical garden Departmental of Animal and Environmental Biology of Faculty of Life sciences of University of Benin respectively. Result on abundance of insects revealed that Larvae of Alphitobius sp. gave highest abundance in Location A (18.00±0.000) while Larvae of Bradysia sp. gave highest abundance in Location B (8.33±13.577). In comparison between locations, the abundance of insects is higher in Location A (6.40±6.878) than Location B (3.13±6.968). There was significant difference in insect abundance between locations but no significant difference between insect type (p>0.05). Result on population of insects at harvest revealed that only one type of insect (Larvae of Alphitobius sp.) was found in location A while three types of insect (Staphlinus sp., Alphitobius sp. and Larvae of Bradysia sp.) were found in location B. The abundance of insects was highest in location A. Only three of the locations produced sporophores. The substrates placed in front of the Botany Laboratory (location C) did not produce because of the presence of green mould (Table 1). This is in line with the work done by Sharma et al., (2007). Those grown under direct sunlight (location  E) failed to produce sporophore, probably due to the dry weather condition, as they were placed in the open, directly under the sun.