Caracterização da estrutura espaço-temporal da comunidade de abelhas euglossinas (Hymenoptera, Apidae) na Hileia Baiana

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

1999

RESUMO

To characterize the spatiotemporal patters in species richness, abundance, and morphology of an assemblage of forest-inhabiting male euglossine, I sampled bees monthly with orchid fragrance baits in three arbitrarily selected areas of a continuous old-growth tropical coastal Atlantic forest in the Linhares Forest Preserve in southeaster Brazil. The 16,117 euglossines sampled and identified. In the 12 months between September, 1996 and August, 1997 belonged to 31 species. The dominant species were Euglossa cordata, Eg. analis and Eulaema nigrita. Analysis of variance provided no evidence for spatial heterogeneity in euglossine richness within Linhares forest, however it varied seasonally, with peaks at the beginning (November) and end (April) of the summer rainy season. Total euglossine abundance peaked at the end of the rainy season (March-April) and a second time near the middle of the dry season August). These results indicate that seasonally and spatially restricted samples may not be representative of the abundance and composition of euglossine bee communities. Forewing and glossa lengths (variables related to nectar acquisition from flowers of differing morphologies) were used to categorize species in to morphologically similar groups and these were ana1yzed for seasonal partitioning of resources. The abundance of bees of different forewing lengths (small, medium ad large) and glossa lengths (small and large) was highly seasonal. The smaller short-tongued bees, providing more that 50% of the bees present at any time of the year, were more abundant during the rainy (January-March) and dry season (July-August). Medium and large long tongued bees, although present alI year, were relatively rarer, with medium bees peaking during April and June and large bees exhibiting a broad October through March peak. Both size classes decreased in abundance during the dry season when small bees were common. Additional univariate analyses searched for spacing patters in the statistical distributions of forewing and glossa measurements suggestive of character displacement. Analyses based on the entire assemblage of 31 species showed significant aggregation of species with respect to the two variables. In contrast, spacing in the 12 most abundant species was over dispersed, suggesting that ecological interactions among the dominant bees may favor species that are morphologically divergent en feeding adaptations an thereby contribute to the organization of these communities

ASSUNTO(S)

reservas florestais abelha - espirito santo (estado)

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