Abstract
Understanding the effects of anthropogenic changes on groups that perform key ecosystem services, such as pollination and pest control, is essential for conservation and maintenance of these groups in landscapes. We aimed to understand how landscape heterogeneity and the natural vegetation loss affect the diversity of bees, wasps and their parasitoids in a resource limited semiarid environment. We sampled bees and wasps that nest in pre-existing cavities in 20 landscapes, for two years, in Ubajara National Park, in northeastern of Brazil. We recorded eleven species of bees, nine of wasps and six of parasitoids in 657 trapnests. Landscape heterogeneity had different effects on bees, wasps and their parasitoids. Landscape configuration had stronger effect than composition. Bee abundance decreased according to the complexity of the spatial arrangement of landscape units, while wasp abundance increased. Our study shows that in semiarid regions some species may have different responses to landscape structure from those found in other regions. The spatial patterns described here have important implications for conservation of these essential biological groups, indicating that conservation actions for these groups should associate both landscape composition and configuration to increase the provision of resources and to facilitate the access to resources throughout the year.
Highlights
In In the last decades, several studies have warned about the decline of bee and wasp populations around the world (Tscharntke et al 1998; Roubik 2001; Klein et al 2002; Gallai et al 2009; Potts et al 2010)
Our study has shown that both landscape composition and configuration have effects on the assemblages of bees and wasps that nest in pre-existing cavities
Landscape configuration played a greater role in determining their richness and abundance than did landscape composition
Summary
In In the last decades, several studies have warned about the decline of bee and wasp populations around the world (Tscharntke et al 1998; Roubik 2001; Klein et al 2002; Gallai et al 2009; Potts et al 2010). Heterogeneous landscapes that include agricultural habitats may provide a greater diversity of resources for wasps and bees (Klein et al 2002; Winfree et al 2007; Moreira et al 2015; Boscolo et al 2017). When essential resources are lacking in a certain environment, these insects can seek alternative resources available in other nearby patches This cannot occur in homogeneous landscapes with large modified areas where different environments tend to be too far from each other to allow efficient foraging strategies (Schüepp et al 2011; Moreira et al 2015; Boscolo et al 2017; Hipólito et al 2018)
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