Species turnover and low stability in a community of euglossine bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) sampled within 28 years in an
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Species turnover and low stability in a community of euglossine bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) sampled within 28 years in an urban forest fragment Léo Correia da ROCHA-FILHO1 , Paula Carolina MONTAGNANA2 , Danilo BOSCOLO2 , Carlos Alberto GARÓFALO2 1 Instituto de Biologia - INBIO, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia - UFU, 38400-732, Uberlândia, MG, Brazil Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo 14040-901, Brazil
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Received 26 November 2019 – Revised 2 March 2020 – Accepted 7 April 2020
Abstract – Orchid bees are important long-distance pollinators in Neotropical rainforests. Despite their great flight capacity, some species avoid leaving the forest and might be then more vulnerable to the negative effects of habitat fragmentation. Here, we sampled the euglossine fauna from a forest fragment in an urban zone and compared the data to two surveys conducted in the same area 28 and 20 years before. Twelve species were sampled, and the highest values of both abundance and richness were recorded in the present sampling. Species turnover was observed with the resilient species Euglossa cordata and Eulaema nigrita presenting a high increase in number over the years whereas the prevalent species in the former samplings, Euglossa pleosticta , show the highest stable populations. Conversely, the abundance of Euglossa annectans decreased until zero in the last sampling. The studied orchid bee populations had a lower stability value when compared with other euglossine long-term surveys. Our results indicate that even a small forest fragment within an urbanised landscape and subjected to different levels of anthropogenic impacts harbours a diverse euglossine fauna. It is suggested that not only the preservation and maintenance of forest fragments in urban areas but also its restoration after environmental impacts are important procedures to support species-rich wildlife. Euglossa cordata / Eulaema nigrita / Long term / Orchid bees / Resilient species
1. INTRODUCTION Orchid bees (Apidae: Euglossini) consist of approximately 250 species distributed from southern USA to northern Argentina (Michener 2007; Ascher and Pickering 2020), but the highest diversity is found in tropical rainforests of South America (Dressler 1982; Roubik and Hanson 2004). These bees are recognised as keystone pollinators of a myriad of Neotropical plants
Corresponding author: L. Rocha-Filho, [email protected] Handling Editor: Klaus Hartfelder
(Dodson 1966; Dressler 1982; Rocha-Filho et al. 2012; Ospina-Torres et al. 2015), especially orchids, since ca 700 species are exclusively pollinated by euglossine males (Roubik and Hanson 2004). Because of their long tongues, orchid bees are able to forage on long-tubed corolla flowers, which are inaccessible to other insects, expanding then the range of plant species visited for nectar collection (Dressler 1982). In addition, the analysis of the pollen content stored by female
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