The complex responses of social stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) to tropical deforestation

Despite concern over a putative “global pollination crisis”, we still have an incomplete understanding of how bee communities respond to land-use change. I studied the responses of social stingless (or “meliponine”) bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini) to surrounding forest cover and floral resources in 35 sites in a largely deforested landscape in Costa Rica over three years, sampling bees with a standardized netting protocol. I recorded a diverse fauna of meliponines, comprised of 20 species and nine genera. I found that meliponine species richness and abundance are strongly related to forest cover, but not floral resource variables (blooming plant species richness and abundance). The effect of forest on meliponine abundance, but not diversity, disappeared when the most common meliponine species, Trigona fulviventris (which comprised ∼45% of sampled individuals), was excluded from analyses. Meliponine community composition, by contrast, was related most strongly to plant species richness, only weakly to forest cover, and not related to blooming plant abundance. This work differs from past work in the same landscape, which did not find evidence of changes in species richness or abundance of meliponines and forest-related variables (distance to forest or forest fragment size), but did find shifts toward meliponine-dominated communities near forests, especially larger ones. The larger true sample size (i.e. number of sample sites) of the present work likely improved the statistical power to detect these relationships. While meliponines are forest dependent, I recorded some species in the smallest forest fragments in the landscape, and as a group they respond strongly to overall forest cover in the landscape (i.e. including both small and large patches of forest). Both of these observations support arguments for preserving even small fragments of forest in agricultural landscapes. Given the ecological and economic importance of meliponine bees, it is imperative that we better understand their long-term conservation needs in the changing tropical landscapes of the world.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	51360 Brosi, B.J.
Format:	biblioteca
Language:	| 0
Published:	Amsterdam (Países Bajos): ELSEVIER, 2009
Subjects:	APIDAE, MELIPONA, POLINIZADORES, DEFORESTACION, UTILIZACION DE LA TIERRA, PAISAJE, BIODIVERSIDAD,
Online Access:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2009.02.025
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