Abstract
Bee communities were studied with three different conditions of land-use: 1) urban area; 2) crops and livestock; and, 3) preserved vegetation. All three conditions have elements of tropical dry forest and are in the "Sierra de Quila" Flora and Fauna Protection Area and its influence zone. Sampling was carried out throughout the year (three days per month) for each land-use condition. Bee species and their abundance were registered with the intention of knowing how changes in the vegetation are related to bee community structure (richness, abundance, and α and β diversity).A total of 14,054 individuals from 160 species were registered. A rarefaction analysis, showed that the preserved areas had significantly greater richness and diversity. Beta diversity analysis revealed a species turnover of nearly 32% among each pair of conditions. It is concluded that the changes in land-use negatively affect richness and diversity and causes major changes in species composition of the bee community. For this reason, it is recommended that the protection of the tropical dry forest, both for this study area but also in general for Mexico, is essential to guarantee the conservation of this group of insects, which are required for the reproduction of a great number wild and cultivated plant specie.
Highlights
Pollinators are a key component for global biodiversity, because they assist in the sexual reproduction of many plant species and play a crucial role in maintaining terrestrial ecosystems and food security for human beings (Potts et al 2010, van der Sluijs and Vaage 2016)
Tropical dry forest present a great bee species richness in Mexico (Ayala 1988, Ayala et al 1996), which is explained by the high diversity of entomophilous plants (Ayala 2004), and their differentiated phenology, which provides to this group of organisms, resources for most of the year (Reyes-Novelo et al 2009)
The first was an urbanized area (U) at Tecolotlán, a municipality with 9,189 inhabitants (IIEG 2015); the second was an agricultural area with crops and livestock (CL), which begins on the area surrounding the town, and is characterized by the presence of crops as well as cattle ranches, which were slightly fragmented by secondary vegetation and some remaining trees of the tropical dry forest (TDF), used as living fences
Summary
Pollinators are a key component for global biodiversity, because they assist in the sexual reproduction of many plant species and play a crucial role in maintaining terrestrial ecosystems and food security for human beings (Potts et al 2010, van der Sluijs and Vaage 2016). Tropical dry forest present a great bee species richness in Mexico (Ayala 1988, Ayala et al 1996), which is explained by the high diversity of entomophilous plants (Ayala 2004), and their differentiated phenology (generally, tree species flowering in dry season while herbaceous and shrub species flowering in wet season), which provides to this group of organisms, resources for most of the year (Reyes-Novelo et al 2009) This vegetation type covered approximately 270,000 km in 1990 but currently there are great pressures exerted on this type of forest. They found changes in land use on 23% of the surface and that only 27% of this type of vegetation remained intact (Trejo and Dirzo 2000)
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