Sandpits provide critical refuge for bees and wasps (Hymenoptera: Apocrita)
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Sandpits provide critical refuge for bees and wasps (Hymenoptera: Apocrita) ˇ ehounek Petr Heneberg • Petr Bogusch • Jirˇ´ı R
Received: 15 April 2012 / Accepted: 18 August 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract Evidence-based conservation allows the evaluation of both the collateral benefits and the drawbacks of a wide range of human activities, like quarrying. In this study, the community structure of bees and wasps (Hymenoptera:Apocrita) in Central European sandpits was investigated, focusing on the changes caused by quarrying cessation and technical reclamation, as well as on the changes caused by spontaneous succession leading to the increased availability of food resources but also to the loss of the number and size of available bare sand patches. The bees and wasps demonstrated an exceptional ability to colonize the newly emerging sand quarrying areas, and to survive in them unless these were quarried as intensively as to not allow the development of any early successional vegetation. Both active and closed sandpits were found to serve as important regional refuges for the persistence of many rare species. In total, 221 species were detected, 53 of those were red-listed, with two species thought to be regionally extinct. Typically, active quarrying was associated with the presence of Bembecinus tridens, Halictus Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10841-012-9529-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. P. Heneberg (&) Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, Ruska´ 87, 100 00 Prague 10, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] P. Bogusch Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Kra´love´, Rokitanske´ho 62, 500 03 Hradec Kra´love´, Czech Republic J. Rˇehounek Calla—Association for Environmental Conservation, Cˇeske´ Budeˇjovice, Fra´ni Sˇra´mka 35, 370 04 Cˇeske´ Budeˇjovice 3, Czech Republic
subauratus, H. maculatus, and Andrena nigroaenea. The list of the species of conservation interest is provided, and so is the detailed analysis of the life-history traits of the species in relation to the presence of bare sand patches, vegetation cover, quarrying intensity, and time elapsed since the formation of each artificial habitat patch. Sandpits as refuges for xerothermophilous and psammophilous hymenopterans are usually completely and irreversibly lost if the current legislature enforcing the technical reclamation over spontaneous or assisted succession is applied in all or most of the post-mining areas. Keywords Artificial biotopes Habitat conservation Landscape restoration Nest site availability Post-industrial sites Post-mining sites
Introduction In recent years, the interest in the entomofauna of postindustrial sites has increased (Babin-Fenske and Anand 2011; Milisa et al. 2010; Tropek et al. 2010; Harabisˇ and Dolny´ 2012; Heneberg 2012; Srba and Heneberg 2012). In particular, post-mining sites, which are typically highly degraded or even destroyed, repres
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