KARAKTERISTIK SUB DAS BANGO KABUPATEN MALANG TERHADAP KEHIDUPAN SQUAMATA

Squamata is an order that is included in the reptile class which consists of snakes and lizards. Squamata also has sub orders including lacertilia/sauria, serpentes, and amphisbaenia. The behavior of squmata, which depends on ideal environmental conditions, makes these animals highly sensitive to environmental changes so that this characteristic can be used by humans as an indicator of changes in environmental quality, especially in river basin ecosystems. The aim of this research is to determine the community and distribution of squamata in the Bango sub-watershed, Malang Regency, East Java using the VES (Visual Encounter Survey) method. Observations of squamata were carried out at two different times, sampling was carried out in the morning to look for diurnal squamata (06.00 to 11.00 WIB), and in the evening to look for nocturnal squamata (18.00 to 23.00 WIB). Data collection was based on six different types of land in the Bango sub-watershed area, Malang Regency, namely open land, dry agricultural land, rice fields, plantation forests, secondary dry land forests, and built-up land. The analysis used in this research includes species diversity, evenness, dominance, level of encounter, disclosure, and similarity. Research conducted shows that the squamata community found in the Bango sub-watershed contains 631 squamata individuals consisting of 21 species that live in the Bango sub-watershed with low diversity values in each land type but high in the entire Bango sub-watershed. The results of calculating the similarity index for each land cover have a high level of similarity, namely 66.7%.