Brazilian stingless bees are threatened by habitat conversion and climate change

Abstract

The stingless bees of the genus Melipona play an important role as pollinators of wild and cultivated plants in the Neotropics, contributing to forest maintenance and food production. Similar to other bees, meliponids are threatened by anthropogenic impacts on the environment, such as habitat conversion and climate change. Here, we apply ecological niche models to estimate the habitat suitability for ten stingless bee species from Brazil. We quantify the impacts of land use change and climate change on their distribution. Additionally, we assess the efficiency of the Brazilian protected areas (PAs) for the conservation of these species. We found that the predicted species range increased in agricultural lands and decreased in natural vegetation between 2000 and 2014. Our models predict that seven species will face a reduction and three species an increase in their suitable habitat in the coming years. The Brazilian PAs fail in safeguarding the majority of climatically suitable habitats for the stingless bee species studied. Our findings suggest that land use and climate change pose a serious risk for the conservation of stingless bees and their pollination services in Brazil.