Abstract
The success of social wasps in anthropic environments is related to their ability to nest both in vegetation and human constructions, and, as humans modify their own environments, wasps community structure may shift as well. Our aim was to assess the diversity of social wasps and their interactions with nesting substrates seasonally in an urban squares area in Southeastern Brazil, 15 years after the first diversity study in this area. We actively searched for nests in the rainy season between 2014 and 2015 and in the dry season of 2015. Although social wasp species richness did not change since the 2000 assessment (13 species in 5 genera), the abundance decreased substantially. Additionally, wasps showed a general trend of nesting on the man-made materials Metal (n = 115, 60%) and Concrete (n = 106, 36%), especially by the two most common species sampled: Mischocyttarus cassununga and Polistes versicolor. We suggest that abundance decrease may correspond to the reduction of green areas in the assayed locations. These results support the well-known importance of maintaining green areas in urban environments to promote the growth and conservation of diverse social wasp communities.
Highlights
The social wasps are widely distributed throughout all continents, except Antarctica
We investigated short-term seasonal changes in the social wasp community structure, by investigating population dynamics across two following seasons and studied the interactions between the species of social wasps and their nesting substrates, trying to establish a link between this relation and the group’s seasonality and diversity in order to better understand the ecology of social wasps in urban areas
We identified a total of 13 species from five genera: Mischocyttarus Saussurre, 1853, Polistes Latreille, 1902, Polybia Lepeletier, 1836, Protopolybia Ducke, 1905 and Synoeca de Saussure, 1852 (Table 1)
Summary
The social wasps are widely distributed throughout all continents, except Antarctica. The importance of studying social wasps and their diversity is emphasized by their ecological roles. Social wasps may act as pollinators when visiting flowers (Clemente et al, 2012), detritivores when foraging on decaying fruits (Barbosa et al, 2014) and animal carcasses (Moretti et al, 2011), and predators when foraging on agricultural pests (e.g., caterpillars) (Elisei et al, 2010). Social wasps are part of a complex intra and interspecific ecological web that is yet to be fully comprehended (Menezes et al, 2014; Virgínio et al, 2016)
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